Quote:
Originally posted by SomeGuy:
I guess I should've given some more insight. Let's see, the speech has to be between 6-8 minutes long, point deducted if under/over time limit. Mr. Harrington said I have to memorize it, and I won't have to worry about making too much eye contact. It won't be in front of an audience, just a few judges. Am I the only person here in FFA? [img]tongue.gif[/img] I've decided not to post a copy of the speech, as I've decided to re-do the entire thing. I wasn't satisfied with my first draft.
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You still need to worry about eye contact. In fact, eye contact is especially important when you have only a few people because it will be fairly obvious if you are not looking at anyone when there is only a few people to look at at all. In front of a large audience, you can kind of gaze about the group and it looks like you're making good eye contact, even if you don't actually catch anyone's eye. But don't focus on just one person - it will make them uncomfortable and the others will feel left out lol
. I would suggest scanning your eyes over all the people, occasionally resting on one person for a little while, then moving on again.
It's a shame you have to memorise your speech - there wouldn't be that many situations where you'd be making a speech in the real world where you couldn't have notes or slides so I dunno what the point of that is. Probably just to make you sweat all the more
. Even though you can't have notes though, that doesn't mean you should write an entire script and learn it by rote. Still just write main points and practice talking about them. Do time yourself when you practice, as someone suggested. Time yourself doing your speech exactly as you will be doing it - in front of the mirror is good. But do give yourself a bit of leeway timewise - often people speak much faster when they're actually doing it than in practice through nerves. 7 minutes would be safest.