Public Speaking Exercises

Here are a few public speaking exercises that will help you to warm up and get your speaking at the best you can be.

Warm Up Public Speaking Exercises

Just as you would warm up before doing strenuous work or exercise, why would you not want to do the same with your vocal muscles. Yet rarely do I ever see speakers loosening up. Virtually every hall or auditorium that you will give a speech in has a green room. It may not be called a green room but there is a room where you can quietly warm up with out anyone thinking your weird.

You can do these exercises before you give a speech to thousands or to just one. Your next sales call would be a good time to implement them. If you have to speak to someone on the phone, a quick warm up would be in line. Here are a few voice exercises.

These exercises will help you with voice control.

Exercise Your Ability to Relax

Do some deep breathing relaxation exercises. Think head, neck, tongue, throat chest and lungs. Relax and loosen them up.

Tweeter Some Tongue Twisters

Next, you will need to loosen up the resonators of your voice. You can do this with tongue twisters. Especially do the ones that you will have problems with.

My personal challenge is with...

She sells sea shells by the sea shore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Voice the Vowels

Go through the vowels. Aaaa, Eeeee, Ieee, Ooooo, Uoooo, Y.

Do the Doe, Ray, Me scales. I learned one day quite by accident that it is easier to learn voice control singing than speaking. If you cannot sing well and your singing is not going to be a career, you will find that your less inhibited in the shower.

Also, singing requires a different type of breathing. With singing it is easier to master whole body voice control. Then once you have the feeling, you convert the singing to speaking. It becomes much easier.

Amp up Your Emphasis

Using the proper sense stress or right emphasis on the right words is one of the speaking skills.

Here is a public speaking exercise that will allow you to go through the paces in your mind. Say this sentence using emphasis for each of the words that is in all capital letters. After you have done it reading the sentences, do it from memory. Listen to how the meaning changes for each change in sense stress.

I did not say you took the last piece of candy.

I DID not say you took the last piece of candy.

I did NOT say you took the last piece of candy.

I did not SAY you took the last piece of candy.

I did not say YOU took the last piece of candy.

I did not say you TOOK the last piece of candy.

I did not say you took THE last piece of candy.

I did not say you took the LAST piece of candy.

I did not say you took the last PIECE of candy.

I did not say you took the last piece OF candy.

I did not say you took the last piece of CANDY.

Do a Speed Speech

If you have ever watched speed chess where the moves are made to a clock that switches as the player taps a button on the top.

Use the same clock and with a partner, the first person gives a topic and the second has to instantly give a one minute speech. Then as the bell goes off, the completing speaker gives the topic for the first. Do this 3 times with out stopping. The topic or theme need only be one word. To limit the scope, determine if it will be animal, mineral or vegetable.

Then critique each other. With the need to speak under pressure, you will gain new insights in to how you think and what your weaknesses are.

This exercise will help you improve your ability to think on your feet.

These are just a few of the public speaking exercises. There will be more public speaking exercises to come in future days.

Speechmastery.com: The Public Speaking Public Speaking Exercises Web Site

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