Delivery Methods

Prof Anderson: Hi class, this is William Anderson
again, and in this video I want to talk to

you about deliver methods.

These are various methods for delivering
your speech, and I want to

talk to you about four of them.

The first one is called a manuscript
delivery.

In a manuscript delivery, you have
your entire speech written

out in front of you and you read it
verbatim.

Now there is a big important
advantage to using this method, and

that is this is the only method that
precise wording is important.

In other words, you are going to say
exactly what you meant to say

and perhaps more importantly,
you're going to avoid saying something

you did not mean to say.

So, any time precise wording is really
important, this is the only method

you should consider using.

However,. there are two important
disadvantages to this method.

The first one, is it's very poor eye
contact.

With eye contact, we communicate
our engagement with the audience, so it's

really important that you're giving it
up using a manuscript delivery.

Also this method, it's very inflexible.

As we've talked about before in the
course, it's important that you are

able to adapt to the facial expressions
and the nonverbal feedback

you're getting from your audience.

Well, if you're staring at your script
reading it, you're not even seeing

those facial expressions, you're not
even seeing that nonverbal feedback.

So, because of these two important
disadvantages, this method should

never be used anytime precise
wording isn't important.

For most of you, precise wording
will never be important.

There are a couple of instances
where it might be.

For example, if you ever find yourself
in a very bad legal situation,

sometimes your attorney might
prepare a very specific statement for you

and tell you to read it.

Now, sometimes in our normal
vernacular, our normal conversation,

there are multiple words that
effectively say the same thing.

But, in a legal setting, each word can
have a very specific important meaning.

And remember, anything you say
can and will be used against you

in a court of law, and so in this sort
of circumstance it could be

that the exact wording that you
use can have a very big impact.

Or, if you're a spokesperson
for the government.

Sometimes the government, a
government spokesperson making a slip

of the tongue, using wrong words,
can have a catastrophic effect.

So in one of those instances
precise wording might be important.

But for the vast majority of you,
precise wording will never be important

and therefore, reading our speech
is generally a bad idea.

The second one is memorized.

In the memorized method, we
spend a considerable amount of time

writing out our speech and then
much more time committing it to memory

so that we can recite it.

the advantage to the memorized
delivery method is that it allows for

very good eye contact, you literally
don't have notes to look at.

But there are two compelling
disadvantages to this method.

First of all, it is the most
inflexible of the methods.

When you memorize a speech,
you really memorizing the flow.

You're memorizing, um, not
individual words but rather the flow of

the speech, and so if you look up
and you're talking to your audience

and they look confused, you know you
have to go back and provide a different

example or a different explanation.

But to do so would break you from
that flow, making it hard to get back in.

The second disadvantage to this is this
is the most inefficient of the methods.

By inefficient, I mean you're wasting
time committing your speech to

exact memory.

So, let's say, for example,
you're giving a 5 minute speech.

And a 5 minute speech, for most people,
is about four to five pages of text,

probably closer to four.

Well, if it takes you an hour to write a
four page paper and you're really

good at memorization and it takes
you two hours and you can commit the

entire four pages to memory, that's
180 minutes that you've put towards

writing and memorizing your speech.

If you would've taken that same
180 minutes, spent about 10 or 15 minutes

preparing a good speaking outline,
and then all the rest of the time

focused on practicing and polishing
your delivery, you would've

been able to get- well if it's 15 minutes,
that would leave 165 minutes of

a 5 minute speech, and that's
33 practices I believe.

If you practice your speech 10 times,
just 10 times, you can dramatically

improve your delivery.

Here, you're giving up 30 practices so ypou can make sure you used the right