Launchpad Activity 5

In your everyday life there will be situations where you will need to speak to an audience. This Activity gives you the opportunity to practise that.

Knowing your angle and having a clear structure, makes it much easier to design, develop and deliver a speech that is engaging, well thought out and will leave an impression on your audience (for all the right reasons). No one wants to be remembered as ‘that’ speech giver!

Activity 5 – Situation Speech

Duration: 3 mins
Pre-requisites: Activity 1, 2, 3, 4

Outcomes

By the end of this activity, you will be able to:

  1. Deliver a structured speech for a specific situation, focusing on opening, body and conclusion.

Objectives

To do this, you will need to keep the following objectives in mind:

  • Choose from: making an announcement, giving an award or proposing a toast.
  • Decide on a theme or angle for your speech.
  • Using the theme, design your speech using a structure that includes an opening, body and conclusion.

The Why…

In your everyday life there will be situations where you will need to speak to an audience. This Activity gives you the opportunity to practise that. 

Knowing your angle and having a clear structure, makes it much easier to design, develop and deliver a speech that is engaging, well thought out and will leave an impression on your audience (for all the right reasons). No one wants to be remembered as ‘that’ speech giver!

Where do I start?

The situation speech is designed to give you practise doing something you are likely to have to do in your life outside Rostrum. 

Start by choosing which of the three situations you want to do – making an announcement, giving an award or proposing a toast. 

Once you have chosen, talk to your family and friends about what they have seen and heard and gather ideas of an angle or approach you could use. Don’t be afraid to be creative. 

The How

Specific guidelines on how to tackle this activity.

Choose from: making an announcement, giving an award or proposing a toast.

  1. Choose something that you may know you have coming up soon, or the one you’d be most likely to have to prepare in the future.
  2. Focus on the community or group you’re part of, and build the speech around a real life situation that is more than likely to occur. Try to avoid creating something completely fictitious – it will be much easier to structure and deliver it naturally if you can envision the people and situation you’ll be delivering to. But if you have to create, choose a common type of speech or ask for help from your Club Coach or other Club members.

Decide on a theme or angle for your speech

The angle or theme could be historical, personal, ironic, empathetic, humorous.

Using the theme, design your speech using a structure that includes an opening, body and conclusion

  1. Remember, an introduction should only hint at what is to come, and give a broad summary if necessary. 
  2. Decide on the purpose (i.e. to entertain, inform, persuade or yourself using outside of Rostrum at work or in the activate) or outcome, and then think about some key ideas/ points you want to make about the subject matter (the announcement, award, or toast).
  3. Carefully consider the order in which you want to present these points.
  4. Once you’ve decided on your topic, its purpose and some key ideas for your speech, prepare the ending. The conclusion should sum up the main points, and leave with a recommendation or final statement that brings the whole speech together. This will serve as a focus for the structure of the speech.

Tips and traps

  1. Work out the structure before the words you’ll use.
  2. This is not necessarily a humorous or entertaining speech. 
  3. Think really carefully about the real purpose behind the topic you have been given. Treat it like it is a real situation.
  4. Choose something which could occur in real life (e.g. the closing of a business/laying off staff, a wedding toast, a fairest and best award), and think about the purpose (i.e. the reason you’re giving the speech).
  5. Timeframe – split the time into the three sections of the speech.
  6. Don’t fall into the common trap of spending a lot of time choosing one and leaving yourself short in time for preparation. 
  7. A secret in this activity is timing – don’t go for too long. 
  8. Direct your speech at the intended audience (i.e. don’t make it about You!).
  9. Be tactful.
  10. A common mistake in this activity is for people to give a great speech but forget to actually make the announcement, or propose the toast or give the award.
  11. Beware of making it personal (when it’s not).
  12. Don’t try to be funny – unless it’s an obviously funny situation. This activity is not about humour and you’ll learn far more by taking the serious side of the activity. 

Guidelines for Program Director:

  • Choices are already provided (see Objective 1).  You can be more specific (e.g. announcing a change in organisational structure to the staff;  presenting a Citizen of the Year award;  a wedding toast by the best man or chief bridesmaid).
  • The speaker will get more out of a serious speech and as PD you can direct this to give them the best opportunity.
  • Check the list of Speech Topics for inspiration and to provide interest.
  • Start with a 3 minute speech.  Subsequent situation speeches may be longer or can also be done as short (2 min) impromptu speeches.

Resources that may be helpful

  1. Links to speaking hacks (#7, #9 etc)
  2. video links
  3. how to sheets