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.