The Entertaining Speaker

People like to be entertained and the entertaining speaker offers listeners a pleasant diversion from their demanding lives. This manual offers five projects that will help you develop your skills as an entertaining speaker.

1. The Entertaining Speech

Time:

Objectives:

5-7 minutes

Entertain the audience through use of humor and/or drama drawn from your personal experience.

Organize an entertaining speech for maximum audience impact.

2. Resources for Entertainment

Time:

Objectives:

8-10 minutes

Draw humorous and/or dramatic material from sources other than your own personal experience.

Adapt your material to suit your topic, your own personality and the audience. Use entertaining material as a means of conveying a serious message.

3. Make Them Laugh

Time:

Objectives:

8-10 minutes

Prepare a humorous speech drawn from your own experience.

Strengthen the speech by adapting and personalizing humorous material from outside sources.

Deliver the speech in a way that makes the humor effective.

4. A Dramatic Talk

Time:

Objectives:

10-12 minutes

Develop an entertaining dramatic talk about an experience or incident, or give a dramatic reading.

Include vivid imagery, characters and dialogue.

Deliver the talk in an interpretative manner.

5. Speaking After Dinner

Time:

Objectives:

13-15 minutes

Prepare an entertaining after-dinner talk on a specific theme.

Deliver the talk extemporaneously, using the skills developed in the preceding entertainment projects.

Note: For some speech projects, the presentation time may also include additional segments for such activities as question-and-answer periods, depending on the project.