There are three rules for writing a speech - but no one really knows what they are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been reading Anna Quindlen’s 2022 book, Write for Your Life. A section starting on page 169 is titled Conjugate. On page 182 she says:

 

“Or there’s this observation, most often credited to W. Somerset Maugham: ‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.’  “

 

The she remarks that her piece of direction to everyone who wants to write is just to put your butt in a chair, and write - a word, then another, and another after that.

 

I think similar advice (the tongue-in cheek title for this blog post) is all we can say about speechwriting. An article by Sydne Saccone at LinkedIn Pulse on April 21, 2021 titled My last piano lesson instead repeated, via paragraph titles, the tired Three Rules cliché:

 

Tell them what you’re going to tell [them], Tell them, Then tell them what you told them

 

That alleged W. Somerset Maugham (1874 to 1965) quote about writing a novel has a very curious history. At Quote Investigator on May 6, 2013 there is an article by Garson O’Toole titled There Are Three Rules for the Writing of a Novel. He says it first posthumously (and suspiciously) appeared in 1977 in a book by Ralph Daigh titled Maybe You Should Write A Book. I found it showed up later on page 220 in a 2006 book by R. Keith Sawyer titled Explaining Creativity.  Mr. Sawyer said he got it from a 1996 book by Robert Byrne titled The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, where it is quotation number 1,764 (also in the 1982 edition).

 

The three columns were adapted from a drawing by Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Do men and women get equally nervous when asked to speak in public?

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Forbes on May 11, 2022 there is an article by Diana Booher titled Why public speaking skills are critical - and how to avoid 5 big mistakes women make. The five mistakes are:

 

Jerking, jabbing gestures from the wrists or elbows

Speaking too softly

Standing rigidly

Speaking too fast

Ending sentences with a rising intonation

 

But first she discusses another topic under the heading Do men and women equally get nervous when asked to speak publicly? Her answer (based on experience as a presentation coach for more than three decades) is that both men and women are equally affected. I don’t think so. There is an article by Peter Moore at YouGov on March 27, 2014 titled Argh! Snakes! America’s Top Phobias Revealed. I blogged about it on April 2, 2014 in a post titled YouGov survey of U.S. Adults found they were most commonly very afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Moore reports results from a survey (1000 adults) of fears at four levels, including one shown above - for public speaking. First let’s look at percentages for Very afraid + A little afraid. For the Total there were 56%, for Women there were 62% and for Men there were 49%. So, significantly more women than men were afraid.

 

Another way to look at those results is via a Fear Score, calculated as:

 

Fear Score = [4x(% for Very Afraid) + 3x(% for A little Afraid)

            +2x(% for Not really Afraid) + 1x(% for Not afraid at all)]    

 

For the Total the Fear Score is 2.55 (just above the 2.5 middle for the scale), for Women it is 2.70, and for Men it is 2.36. So on average women were more afraid of speaking than men were. That also was the case for students, as I blogged about on April 14, 2022 in another post titled Fear of public speaking in female and male students at the University of Karachi.

 

Using props to make your presentation memorable

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A month ago, on April 11, 2022, at SketchBubble there is a good article by Ashish Arora titled Make your presentation memorable using props. He shows rather than tells - by using five YouTube videos – two from Toastmasters World Championship speeches and three from TED talks.

 

Back on October 1, 2021 I blogged about Inexpensive inflatable props for speeches. After that, I did a speech on that topic at Pioneer Toastmasters Club. I began with the inflatable microphone shown above deflated and in my shirt pocket. I took it out and blew it up with five breaths. Then I made it a lavalier mic by putting the handle through a twine loop on my shirt, and continued by pulling a (folded) inflatable electric guitar out of a bag.

 

Dividing your work day into four quadrants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw an article by Stephanie Vozza at Fast Company on April 27, 2022 titled How to use ‘daily quadrants’ to get more done each day. She referred to advice from productivity expert Donna McGeorge. Donna advised that you should use the first two hours of your eight-hour workday for high-intensity, high impact work. The second two hours are for high-intensity, low impact work. And, after lunch, the third two hours are for low-intensity, low impact work. Finally, the fourth two hours are for high-intensity, low impact work. As shown above, we can display her advice visually via a 2x2 table, where we start at the upper right and then go around clockwise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on July 3, 2020 I blogged about Is that 2x2 graphic a table, a chart, or a matrix? Should the axis go from left to right, or right to left? As shown above (via a color version rather than her gray scale one), in the last chapter of her most recent book, The 1 Day Refund, Donna displays her advice using a horizontal axis for Impact with High at the left. She says that:

 

“Our body clocks are designed for greater mental agility in the morning and more physical dexterity in the afternoon. This means thinking about when you do something is as important as thinking about what you do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donna assumes that you are a morning person – what Wikipedia terms a Lark. If instead you are an evening person, then her advice on what to do when might not be helpful. As shown above in another 2x2 table, the first two hours should be used for for low-intensity, low impact work. High-intensity, high impact work only should come in the fourth two hours.   

 

Who popularized the word glossophobia? What is a better Plain English alternative?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To me, the twentieth-century compound word glossophobia (for public speaking fear) is a pseudo-technical term intended to impress rather than inform. In Greek the phobia suffix just means a fear, but in English phobia has a different narrower meaning for psychologists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I discussed previously, a phobia has three additional criteria shown above via a Venn diagram from a blog post on December 8, 2019 titled Toastmasters press release confuses a fear of public speaking with a social phobia. The more severe form might better be termed either public speaking phobia or public speaking anxiety disorder.

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines glossophobia just as fear of public speaking. It says the first known use was in 1964.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, the Ngram Viewer at Google Books shows use of the word only taking off after 1970. My searches in Google books found references to it as just a fear of speaking. The first was in the 1931 book by Lee Edward Travis titled Speech Pathology: A Dynamic Neurological Treatment of Normal Speech and Speech Deviations. It says:

 

“Lalophobia – Morbid or extreme dislike of speaking. Synonym: glossophobia”

 

The second Google Books reference was to a 1947 book by S. Stephenson Smith titled How to Double Your Vocabulary. Chapter VI on page 89 is titled 100 Will Get You 5000. It has glossophobia defined as fear of speaking - in a list of twenty phobias taken from the Psychoanalyst’s Repertory. A second edition of that book appeared in 1964, so maybe Smith should get the blame for popularizing glossophobia. And perhaps it is where Merriam-Webster found the word.    

 

An article by Barbara Kendall at EscorpionAtl titled What can trigger glossophobia? says that term was first used by Alexander Luria (a Soviet neuropsychologist) in 1941 to describe the fear of speaking in public.

 

Stage fright is a broader Plain English term for performance anxiety. Sarah Solovitch has an article at Salon on June 21, 2015 titled “Stage fright”: Mark Twain coined the term and gave Tom Sawyer a bad case of it. That phrase came from his 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

 

 A narrower term, speech fright, first appeared in an article at the British Medical Journal on June 5, 1909. It pops up occasionally, but never has really caught on as a Plain English description for the fear of public speaking.  

 

The image was adapted from a March 5, 1913 Puck magazine page at the Library of Congress.  

 

Air Force Reserve C-130 planes are backup air tankers for wildfire readiness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topics for speeches are all around you. We live near the airport in Boise. The past few days I could both see and hear dark-gray four-engine C-130 Hercules assault-transport planes flying low overhead. What is happening is described in an article by Erin Banks Rusby at the Idaho Press and KTVB on May 1, 2022 titled MAFFS training as part of local and regional wildfire-readiness efforts.

 

MAFFS is the acronym for a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System that can slide inside a C-130 and be used to drop 3,000 gallons of fire retardant. Some Air Force Reserve units have them. These planes will be called when needed to augment the commercial air tanker fleet. On August 15, 2015 I blogged about Fighting wildland fires: Hotshots, helicopters, and whatever else it takes.

 

The 2007 image of a C-130 with an earlier version of MAFFS is from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Advantages of receiving multiple speech evaluations in Advanced Toastmasters Clubs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Advanced Toastmasters club provides a speaker with more challenging speech evaluations than a regular club. As shown above, the Advanced evaluations often include a round-robin that provides multiple viewpoints. There also may be two or four evaluations, with each evaluator told ahead of time to focus his attention on a specific area or areas. An article by Bill Brown in Toastmaster Magazine on August 2018 titled Are You Ready for an Advanced Club? discusses some other formats for evaluations.

 

Treasure Valley Advanced Toastmasters Club was chartered in June 2012. From August in 2019 to March of 2022 I was a club member. It met once a month on the evening of the third Monday. I served as their last Sergeant at Arms for their meetings from July 2021 to March 2022, when they disbanded.

 

 

SPEECH EVALUATION AT A REGULAR CLUB

 

The standard oral evaluation for a speech at a Toastmasters club takes two to three minutes. It is based on a form from the Pathways educational program, similar to this one for the Ice Breaker. There are three general comments: You excelled at, You may want to work on, and To challenge yourself. There also usually are seven (or more) specific items to be evaluated in writing on a scale from 1 to 5:

 

Clarity: Spoken language is clear and easily understood

Vocal Variety: Uses tone, speed, and volume as tools

Eye Contact: Effectively uses eye contact to engage audience

Gestures: Uses physical gestures effectively

Audience Awareness: Demonstrates awareness of audience engagement and needs

Comfort Level: Appears comfortable with the audience

Interest: Engages audience with interesting, well-constructed content

 

Some of those seven items typically wind up in the oral evaluation. They are all the audience learns about.  Of course, the speaker could email the evaluator and tell him which other items he could concentrate on. And if he has a mentor, then he also could ask his mentor to evaluate the speech using a second copy of that Pathways form. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Members of the audience also have a Ballots and Brief Evaluations form (Item 163) with perforated slips for casting their votes for Best Speaker, etc. As shown above, that form also has a little 1-1/ 4’ by 4 1/ 4” slip for giving brief comments to a speaker. A speaker might get six to ten of them.

 

 

SPEECH EVALUATION AT AN ADVANCED CLUB

 

 

Advanced Toastmasters clubs provide a more detailed evaluation. As previously mentioned, there may be a normal evaluation followed by a round-robin evaluation. But there also may be two or four detailed and focused evaluations (followed by a round-robin).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The National Communication Association (NCA) has a 2007 document titled The Competent Speaker Speech Evaluation Form which can be used as the basis for conducting those detailed evaluations. As shown above, it includes eight competencies (topics). (There also is a holistic form, which I will describe later).  

 

 

 

 

 

Two Detailed Evaluations – like a Tag Team

 

One possible division is a pair of evaluations, like tag-team wrestling. A web page from The Northern Stars Advanced Club describes some possibilities:

 

Two evaluators per speech

Two evaluators per speech, one focusing on content and one on delivery

Two evaluators per speech, one focusing on visual and one on auditory

One evaluator and group verbal comments

One evaluator and group written comments

One evaluator, and an evaluator for that evaluator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For dividing the evaluations into two, one focused on content and one on delivery, we could start with the NCA Holistic Evaluation Form, as is shown above.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four Detailed Evaluations – like a Relay Race Team

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another possibility is four evaluations. One is the Manual evaluation, like at a regular club. The other three can be called visual, auditory (audio or verbal), and content. An article at District 32 on November 4, 2020 titled Give Yourself the Gift of an Advanced or Specialty Club about the Professionally Speaking club described four divisions. Another article by Judy Young at District 32 on October 30, 2021 titled Ready for an Advanced Club? discussed those four divisions being used a decade ago at PhD Speakers (now Beyond Excellence).  

 

Treasure Valley Advanced Club did four evaluations followed by a round-robin. They had used the following detailed description for how to conduct those four evaluations:

 

Verbal Evaluation: Imagine you were listening to this person’s speech on the radio. Focus on the auditory presentation of the speech. This may include things such as: Use of voice as a tool: pitch and range, vocal variety, pacing, voice modulation, etc. Language: verbal crutches, descriptive language, rhetorical devices, grammatical correctness, pronunciation, etc.

 

Visual Evaluation: Imagine watching the speaker while the volume was on mute. Focus on the physical presentation of the speech. This may include such things as: Stage presence, use of available space, eye contact, use of props, descriptive body language and gestures, purposeful movement, etc. Since you actually will be able to hear the speech, note if the visual message complements (rather than contradicts) the verbal message.

 

Content Evaluation: Imagine you were reading the script on paper (if there is one), or the outline, mind map or other structure. Focus on the material used in the speech. This may include such things as organization of information, opening, body and close, segues between portions of speech, use of anecdotal and supporting material, humor, citing source, etc. Was the material adequately edited for the allotted speech time?

 

Manual Evaluation:  Comments should focus on the objectives set forth in the manual or project description. 

 

The tag team wrestling graphic was assembled from images of Theobaud Bauer and Edwin Bibby, and the relay race adapted from this image of a vase, all at Wikimedia Commons.