In order to do your best, you should prepare in two ways:
1. Become not only knowledgeable on the subject, but compose a definite message for the occasion.
2. Give serious thought as to how best to reach that particular audience.
While how well you say the words is important, what you say—your message—is more important. Your style might need polishing, but if your material is clear, your argumentation sound, you are generally ahead of the clever wit who charms his audience without really telling them anything. Such a man is an entertainer, not an informative speaker. In time, people will not take him seriously.
One experienced speaker said encouragingly: "Have something to say. Get up and say it. Sit down. No one has yet come up with a surpassing way." Yes, you can, without a single embellishment, greatly influence others if your talk is positive and to the point.
Furthermore, if, while preparing, you keep before your mind the audience—their background, what you estimate their present views of the subject to be—you are aided to include specific material that will fit them. Acknowledging local circumstances, making application to their personal lives, explaining why this is important to their families—these are the strongest lines of reasoning. Such application can take abstract material and 'pull it down out of the air' and put it into the reality of day-to-day living.
1. Become not only knowledgeable on the subject, but compose a definite message for the occasion.
2. Give serious thought as to how best to reach that particular audience.
While how well you say the words is important, what you say—your message—is more important. Your style might need polishing, but if your material is clear, your argumentation sound, you are generally ahead of the clever wit who charms his audience without really telling them anything. Such a man is an entertainer, not an informative speaker. In time, people will not take him seriously.
One experienced speaker said encouragingly: "Have something to say. Get up and say it. Sit down. No one has yet come up with a surpassing way." Yes, you can, without a single embellishment, greatly influence others if your talk is positive and to the point.
Furthermore, if, while preparing, you keep before your mind the audience—their background, what you estimate their present views of the subject to be—you are aided to include specific material that will fit them. Acknowledging local circumstances, making application to their personal lives, explaining why this is important to their families—these are the strongest lines of reasoning. Such application can take abstract material and 'pull it down out of the air' and put it into the reality of day-to-day living.
