Mia M. answered • 07/24/19
2-Year Speech and Debate Competitor and Winner, Assistant Coach
Practice, practice, practice! Give yourself adequate time to practice and become familiar with your speech! The more you practice your speech, the more familiar you will become with your content to the point that you will need very minimal to no notes at all. Start by practicing your speech with a full-word/full-text speech outline. When you are familiar with the full-text outline, start putting your speech onto notecards. These notecards should at most only contain keywords, phrases, statistics, and dates that usually slip the mind. For instance, if you are giving a speech about why reusable water bottles are good for the environment, a main point of your full-text outline may look like this:
A.) Reusable water bottles are good for the environment.
1.) According to environmentalist XYZ, when one switches to reusable water bottles, pollution rates in the ocean decline by 30% whereas with plastics, the pollution rate will climb over 60%.
2.) sub point #2
3.) sub point #3
And then your notecard version may look something like this:
A. Reusable water bottles = good for the environment
1.) Environmentalist XYZ ---> decline in pollution rates 30% vs 60% increase w/ plastics
Continue practicing through the notecard stage of your speech writing. Eventually you will get to the point where you will rarely need to reference your notes. At this point, bring in an audience member. It can be a friend, family member, or anyone else you are comfortable with. Give them the notecards to hold on to and practice giving the speech without the notes. If you are losing your train of thought, allow whomever your audience member is to feed you your lines. Keep practicing this way until you feel confident with your speech giving skills!
Happy speech giving and remember, there's no shame in notes either! :)
