Page 269 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

236 Part 3 Putting Theory Into Practice

to stress our goodwill for the audience. By connecting with their needs and as-
pirations, we can let them know we are speaking for them, rather then merely
to them. We have heard (or some might say endured) scores of commencement
addresses over our long careers in higher education. The one common feature of
those that were successful is that they focused on the students in the graduating
class, rather than providing an opportunity for the speaker to brag about his or
her accomplishments. Even those who had gone on to prestigious careers (and
to be invited as a commencement speaker that’s pretty much a requirement) usu-
ally put the focus on their audience, not themselves. Ed Rollins, who managed
President Reagan’s re-election campaign, began his commencement speech at
his alma mater by announcing that he had graduated “summa cum lucky.” His
advice to students stressed how much they could accomplish if they put their
education to good use.
Although connecting with the audience is an important part of the introduc-
tion to a speech, the connection should not be made only once. In fact, through-
out the speech we should draw a connection between our message and our audi-
ence whenever possible.

Preview the Speech

Although no one knows who fi rst said, “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; tell
’em; and then tell ’em what you told ’em,” it is a saying with more than a grain
of truth. As we noted in Chapter 2, a preview is a forecast of the main points of a
speech. It simply tells audience members what they are going to hear. In many
ways, it is a summary before the fact. By telling audience members what will fol-
low, a preview helps them put our statements into a coherent frame of reference.
The way to preview a speech is rather simple: Cue the audience to the fact that
we are previewing the main points of our speech, and then state the points in
the same sequence they will be presented. A brief preview might be “In today’s
speech, I would like to share the defi nition, transmission, and prevention of com-
puter viruses.” Or we may want to enumerate our main points, saying, “Today,
I want to fi rst defi ne computer viruses; second, explain how they are transmit-
ted; and third, offer a way to prevent them from infecting your own computer.”

By permission of Johnny Hart and Creator’s Syndicate, Inc.