PESA Prepared Speeches

Hi everyone, it’s Jules from Consensus with a podcast specifically put together for Plain English Public Speaking. As usual, please feel free to email if you’d like us to answer any speaking or critical thinking topic or idea.

Today I’m going to take a keen look at the prepared speech section of Plain English Public Speaking, or PESA. Most schools recognise PESA as the premier national public speaking competition for senior students, So, it’s a great opportunity for students to deeply investigate an aspect of the world that they really care about and then express and share that interest with an audience.

Let’s quickly run through the basics—PESA has two sections: a prepared speech of 8 minutes and an impromptu speech of 3 minutes (after three minutes preparation). The presentations are divided this way to give speakers a chance to really develop, structure and refine an idea through their prepared speech, and then respond more naturally through off-the-cuff engagement with a stimulus.

In this podcast I’m looking forward to tackling prepared speeches, and in a complimentary podcast, I know James is keen to take you through impromptu speeches in his PESA podcast.

At about 16 minutes, this is a longer podcast than our Brief Explainers, so to signal what’s coming up, here’s a breakdown of what we’ll be going through:

1. We’ll start with a quick look at delivering a speech.

2. I’ll examine the purpose of speeches, including problems around tackling big issues head-on.

3. We’ll consider the content of speeches, including looking for source material.

4. I’ll examine a couple of different examples of stimuli that can inspire effective speeches.

5. We’ll look at calls to action in speeches, whether direct or soft.

6. I’ll examine speech structure in some detail.

7. And finally, there’ll be a few tips for overcoming procrastination and blocks to effective thinking and writing.

So, let’s get started with some brief comments on speaking delivery, or manner, before moving on to the more important aspects of making a speech. Unsurprisingly for a public speaking event, the way you speak counts at PESA, but that should be far less of a concern for you than the vitality of the content of your speech. What is almost always true is that the quality of a speaker’s delivery tends to follow how engaged they are with their material. If you care about what you’re saying, then the clarity, pacing and expressiveness of its delivery are likely to follow naturally.

And beyond that, once you have your speech written, you can then practice enough to ensure you know it well and are on top of delivering it. As much as polishing your speaking style does matter, there’s the risk that over-rehearsal can make your delivery stale or even a bit robotic.

Similarly, an exaggerated, over-dramatic or preachy approach to speaking is likely to alienate an audience. Who enjoys being lectured or condescended to? But we all tend to warm to a genuine approach that treats us as an equal.

So, your focus in speaking should be to always attempt to engage the listener through a natural, conversational tone. That really is all we are looking for in your presentation—a confident and clear but natural manner, so don’t worry that there’s something fancier than that.

Now, let’s take a good look at what really matters in any speech—its purpose and its content.

With regards to purpose, traditionally the most common form of speech is one that attempts to persuade an audience of some issue of pressing importance, often suggesting a problem and solution. Many of the most famous and enduring speeches are persuasive in this way. Such an approach to speech writing has been encouraged for students in Australia and is probably the most common form seen at PESA.

Even so, it’s important to understand that taking on a profoundly serious topic and then attempting to convince your audience that something needs to be done about it is not the only possible approach to speech writing. While PESA has seen students tackle prominent issues in this way and deal with them very well, what may appear, at least at first glance, to be less ambitious speeches can be equally effective and appreciated by adjudicators. In fact, it’s worth realising that it is often difficult to say anything fresh or compelling about big issues because the problem is likely to be obvious to your audience. For instance, tackling the importance of climate change, or the problem of racism, in a fresh way is a big ask. Headlining a speech with such topics sets a high bar for any student because it’s difficult to tell your audience anything they don’t already know. Again, there is an inherent risk here of appearing to lecture or condescend to your audience when they are aware of your stance well before you’ve finished articulating it, ultimately undermining the purpose of your speech.

In trying to deal with the problem of setting the bar too high, it can be useful to consider that, to some extent, an effective speech is a form of infotainment. I don’t mean to be glib about this. Perhaps another way of putting it is that some kind of ‘storytelling’ is present in any good speech because the linking of ideas necessarily creates a narrative thread. Looking for a narrative in a series of thoughts is a human tendency anyway, and something we enjoy, so making use of that makes sense.

While speeches have their own form which is fundamentally different from an information report, a series of anecdotes, a comedy routine or a dramatic monologue, they are at their best when they combine fresh information with engaging analysis and interpretation from unexpected vantage points, as well employ tools such as humour or irony, drawing these elements into a well-woven whole. Such elements are all intellectually apt but also help warm the audience to a speaker, and make it more likely you will leave your listeners with a shift in understanding or perspective. Interpreting content in this way, can be informative and entertaining, and still be constructively challenging where necessary.

So, let’s now look at choosing content for your speech.

We are surrounded by a myriad of stories, whether they’re from news articles, books, online commentary, anecdotes you’ve heard, or from your own experience or direct observation. One valuable approach is to start with an example from such a source that intrigues you. This may sound too specific, but most ‘stories’ have some sort of natural link to a larger issue. Being on the look-out for any such example that really engages you, that has an interesting angle, that may have a modest scope but suggests a wider context or analogous situation—all this is gold for a speech writer. And you can still move outward from the specific instance to larger more significant implications.

Let’s look at a couple of stimuli so this approach can become clearer. First, I’ll take an article that appeared in various news media, including the BBC, about a walrus, dubbed Wally, who somehow travelled 4,000 kilometres from the Artic to hang out in waters close to Ireland. Wally, like most walruses, enjoys climbing up onto floating objects, and began doing this with boats in the local harbours, damaging and sometimes sinking them. After unsuccessful attempts to scare him away with loud noises, a different tack was tried—a pontoon was built for him that he could climb on without bothering anyone. Now, this story might seem light and inconsequential but, with the right analysis, it could be turned into a convincing and entertaining speech. Thinking a bit further about the story, it can be seen that, instead of harming Wally, a constructive way of dealing with the situation was found—and tourism also benefited from not trying to chase him away. Taking this information, a speech could, for example, examine the value of seeking lateral solutions to frustrating problems. It could then look at analogous examples to reveal the wider, more consequential, context for this approach to problem solving. Or, a speech could use the example of Wally to examine the value of increased tourist interest as a force for creating empathy for the natural world and environment generally. A speech could potentially even suggest that increased tourism is a harmful trend. The point here is to take up thinking creatively and perceptively about the potential in the stories and issues around you.

In another article, which appeared recently in the Sydney Morning Herald, biophysicist, Miro Astor wrote about how Australia has spent about a million dollars on educating him and on the supercomputers he has used for his PhD medical research. But now, as he completes his degree, he has accepted a job in New York because he believes that the system for work in scientific research here is so broken that he and many other scientists are forced to leave the country. The link between this article and a persuasive speech may well seem more obvious than our last article. The loss of a skilled Australian, like Astor, might stimulate a speech on the waste of human potential for progress and innovation in our country and the limited thinking that makes that possible. Even here, though, examining the evidence critically and perceptively can suggest other interpretations. For instance, a speaker might recast the story in terms of the advantages a scientist like Astor has been given by his country and suggest that some onus must rest with him to use that support to be innovative himself and create opportunities, such as a start-up venture, that return the value of the investment in him to his community. Both these approaches to the topic of social investment and opportunity have some validity—the point here is that it’s an exciting task for speakers to interrogate information in their own way and share the insights they arrive at with their audience engagingly and effectively.

Considering purpose again, remember that, however you choose to carve up your content, it must always be driving towards delivering on your intentions. A clear consideration here would be examining how you want your audience to respond. An obvious outcome of wanting to persuade an audience about the content you’re speaking about is a call for them to act on your opinion. And it’s true that persuasive speeches traditionally often end with a strong call to action. Such calls can be very direct. For instance, speeches as powerful as the Gettysburg Address or the I have a Dream speech leave absolutely no doubt about what they were calling for. But great speeches can also persuade through asking us to re-examine our view of an aspect of the world, or through taking us on a voyage to transformed understanding. The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself speech was given by President Roosevelt after he won election. Rather than a hustings call for support, it was an examination of the state of his nation and an explanation of what he was about to do to solve its depression-era problems. Virginia Woolf’s book, A Room of One’s Own, began as two speeches that asked her audience to reconsider the place of women in society. While it implied that change was needed, its central endeavour was to offer an examination of how stilted were the existing roles of men and women in the society of her times.

So, we can see that a speech can take a point of view, express an opinion, without setting out an emphatic call to immediate action. This is a particularly appropriate approach for student speakers who inevitably are still going through the exciting stage of establishing and evaluating their understanding and opinions about major world and societal issues. Examining evidence and making a call for listeners to reflect on or re-evaluate a question, issue or story is often a more attainable and effective ambition for a student. If it involves an implied or softer call to action, that is entirely reasonable. In considering how rhetoric is used to evaluate and express a point of view, reading editorial and opinion pieces from the press can be a valuable resource.

Now, let’s move on to thinking about speech structure. Organising your material effectively is a key aspect of speech writing. The two obvious starting points you should always consider are:

1. Develop a defined idea of what your speech is about—this should be expressible in one or two clear sentences.

2. This idea or content of the speech should show a clear, well-linked evolution from its introduction through to its conclusion.

Expanding on these points, it’s important to resist the impulse to cram a variety of ideas into your speech—this is risky, even if those ideas appear to have natural links. While the tendency to cram is understandable—ideas proliferate when you get excited about a topic—the result is often diffuse at best or disorganised at worst. Developing one idea thoroughly is almost always the best and most effective approach. This doesn’t mean you can’t give examples or show relevant touch points to the wider context, but showing the clarity of those links is essential.

One of the real differences between a prepared speech and an impromptu, is that you have time to work on the structure and links for the prepared. This luxury of time allows you to develop perspective on your content and its expression. Starting way ahead of any deadline, so you can collate information and evidence, is a key advantage. It enables you to create an early, dot-point structure for how the speech will flow and evolve. This shouldn’t be set in stone—that you can then play with and adjust the structure gives you freedom to think things through. Don’t ever worry about starting at the beginning of your speech and working through it in a linear fashion. Work on the bits you can more readily see—you can always rearrange the parts at any stage in the process. Overcoming a tendency to procrastinate or feel daunted is much easier when you happily accept that what you’re producing is provisional and experimental.

Finally, it’s also worth considering that in speaking competitions, the prepared speeches are usually far closer in quality than the impromptus (even though they are each judged as 50 percent of your performance). This is simply because the process allows everyone to spend more time editing, developing and seeking advice about their work. That’s why it matters to start early and allow your mind to engage with your task at a deep level. When considering your structure, the arc of the story you tell, the links that make the speech a coherent whole and that step the audience through your idea naturally is a key asset that can really distinguish your speech. I’ve just used the word ‘story’ again because I think it’s important to fully understand that every piece of real communication has the form of a narrative embedded in it. It’s why when we share an idea with someone else, we tend to organise it so our listener can see our point unfold so it best reveals why it was worth the telling. Writing and delivering a speech is only a more formal, carefully developed version of that kind of conversational sharing.

That’s it for today’s podcast but, please, email us if you’d like a question answered— info@consensuseducation.org.au

Bye everyone.