OK, I need some help please?
I have been asked to give a 15 minute presentation (testimony). Well I have to say that I like to talk, but the last two times I gave a doctrinal class, I felt like a tongue tied school girl. Thankfully other members of the 30 member class asked lots of questions and carried me through.
So, this is going to be in front of some rather high ranking members of my church who know about my past. I am not planning to talk about my past since they already know. So, I plan to talk about how I came to be where I am, making the early childhood things very brief, and then moving on to adulthood, my divorce and abandonment, my experience with the Muslims, and how I came to be in Kirtland, Ohio, thinking very dark thoughts and what happened that day, and the following 21 months.
I have to say that this time of my life is the happiest time I have ever experienced in my entire life.
So, I don't know how to write a speech. I thought I would just write it all out, bolding some of the key points and then see how long it takes me to read it.
Any suggestions?
Gwendolyn
Comments
Gwendolynfelt as
write it as a short story. Tell how you felt as you grew and changed. Tell what religion means to you.
May Your Light Forever Shine
public speaking
If you read your speech from a piece of paper, it can come across as less personal to the audience. So try to memorize it, and then write those key points out on a card you can refer to if you forget what's supposed to come next.
And just like with any other formal communication, the standard pattern is: 1) State your topic sentence, 2) Give the details that explain your thesis, 3) Repeat or rephrase the topic sentence as your conclusion. So the first step is to figure out what your speech is about and express that in one sentence. Maybe it's that "This time is the happiest I have ever been in my life." And then you'd show some of the bad things you had before, and then what happened to make things better for you. Then you conclude with something like, "So I'd like to thank the community here for bringing sunshine into my life."
Subject Matter expert
I began doing police training in spring of 2008, I was to talk about PTSD and how if affected me and Gender Identity Disorder. I wrote four words down on a 3 by 5 card as a reminder of where I should be.
You know yourself better than any one else, use 3 by 5 cards as a guideline of what you want to say.
If any one disputes you then ask them why they didn't say anything to you when whatever they are disputing was occurring.
Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.
My own two cents' worth
Here's my own two cents' worth. So please don't get bent out of shape if you (or anyone) disagrees - these are just my opinions.
Having a visual presentation is useful IF you are presenting facts, i.e. doing a product demo, or showing statistics - things like that. My thought is, if this is like you are going to talk about your personal details, I think an AV presentation will not be appropriate. It all begins with what is the aim of your presentstion. The closest analogous presentation I ever made was a membership application presentation I had to do in front of my homeowners' association's board, where I had to talk about who I am, talk about what kind of person I am, my bona fides, et cetera. And then the board was given time to ask me questions.
Also - you were only given fifteen minutes. That's a reeeally short time, y'know. AV presentations are overkill for such a short time.
My thought is that you just give a short speech. And it would be all right, I think, to read it off a sheet of paper. I agree with the others that reading from a piece of paper is not the best, but given that you indicated how nervous you are, I think any bad points in having to read something would be less worrisome than having to sound nervous, forgetting lines, making mistakes and all that, which I guarantee will happen if you had to memorize. Cue cards are good, but it still requires you to memorize (the cue cards being just an aid to memory, hence the reason they are called "cue" cards). If I were in your shoes, I'd probably just read from a piece of paper.
Here's the thing: on your piece of paper, be sure to use Biiig Fonts. So you don't hold it close to your face (which is THE major problem when reading off a sheet). And if you end up using multiple pages - that's okay. In fact, I find it helpful to have lots of papers in my hand when I stand up to present - it gives me something to hold and to stop me from fidgeting and becoming more nervous.
Also, use "pause marks" and "stage marks" in the text, and don't break sentences in the middle. Example: "Good evening / my name is Bobbie Cabot / thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk with you / (stop, look up and smile at the audience) / My live as a transgendered person began in ...."
And here's another one: KEEP IT SHORT! You were only given fifteen minutes. To me, that is a short time. But if my talk ends up being even shorter than that - then I consider myself ahead.
But most important of all, you have to have your speech proofread by someone else. I would recommend Holly Hart (if she's available) to proofread, and even improve on, your text. A third person's perspective will make your speech feel and sound better. Guaranteed. Think of that person as your ghostwriter. With the help of your ghostwriter, you can have the emotional and human nuances preserved, so that you end up giving a moving speech (if that is the goal), or make a set of dry facts sound more interesting).
Here's another piece of advice - practice, practice, practice. And after that, practice some more. And the paper that you use for practicing: use that when you give the actual speech. That means, any notes you put down, any marks you write after you've practiced, well they'll be there when you start speaking for real. Never mind if it's all crumpled and dog-eared, or covered with chocolate stains oe whatever. Use that piece of paper.
And if you practice enough, it might be that you won't need the paper. Still - bring it with you: it's guaranteed you will have a fear of forgetting. Having that piece of paper in your hand will take away that fear, coz in your mind, you'll think that, "if I forget, I have the paper to fall back on." And you'll have something to hold and take away the nervousness.
Also, have a dozen neat version of your speech printed out (in normal font, of course, and without the notes and marks), so you can give a copy to whoever wants one. But if you don't have enough, that's okay - if you run out, tell whoever that you can give them a copy later. Also - don't give a copy until you're done speaking.
I have literally given hundreds (maybe thousands) of speeches, and over the past seven years or so (esp. the last couple of years), I've had to do it often enough that think I now know what I'm doing. What I wrote here was hard-won knowledge from first-hand experience, from a person that didn't have much confidence in herself. These things worked for me - I think they'll work for you.
Good luck!
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Strategies
Different people have different strategies for presentations. I'm a chronic introvert so dreaded the times I had to give a presentation during a job interview! One important thing to remember about timings is that what can take 10 minutes in rehearsals may only take 6-8 minutes in the presentation itself due to nerves.
IMHO, I'd go with a scripted intro or few sentences to get you started, then migrate onto notes - for example, a list of key points you want to cover during each segment of your journey. Unlike a business presentation, it's a subject you know inside out - your life!
If you've got time, even if you hate the sound of your own voice, it may be worth recording yourself giving the talk to an imaginary audience (in days of old, a tape recorder would do - nowadays, a microphone and Audacity do much the same trick and you don't have to save the file if you don't want to - just do a couple of "Testing, testing" sound checks beforehand to ensure it records your voice). There's a bonus as well in that (for me at least) recording is almost as nerve-inducing as a live presentation, as you know that when you play it back you'll hear every erm, urr, achingly long pause and cringeworthy anecdote.
If you've got time and you're hesitant about performing coherently from notes, try writing down a script. You don't necessarily have to follow it - just the process of writing the script may help get your thoughts in order so as you start rehearsing it, you can feel confident enough to pull chunks from memory or just ad lib around the general themes. If by the time you've written the script there's still a few days left, try a variety of approaches and see which you feel the most confident about. After all, just because the strategies we're writing about have worked for us, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll work for you! :)
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!