After a calm low-risk topic in the speech to introduce, the second assignment turns up the heat as a bonding exercise for gifted students.
While every public speaking curriculum should begin with a speech that gently introduces the students to what is to come, many experts agree that making an impromptu speech is one of the most difficult things a student can do. This is a reproducible lesson plan that GATE teachers, and teachers with students prepared for the rigors and pressure of public speaking can use as an opening public speaking exercise:
The Impromptu Speech Procedure
You must deliver an "off-the-cuff" or impromptu speech lasting at least sixty seconds. You can take only thirty seconds to think over your topic before you must begin to speak. Your teacher should give you the topic, or as an alternative, open a newspaper and pick out a random word or phrase by running your finger down a page, and this becomes your topic!
The Strategy: Survive!
This may well be the most difficult speech that you will ever deliver, so get it over with and behind you. Everyone in the class will be as nervous as you are, so think of this speech as an initiation to a club; once you have done it, you and your classmates are in.
Rely on your natural instincts for this speech. The most critical thing to remember when delivering an "off-the-cuff" speech is to quickly get onto familiar ground. Make their topic your topic! How? Try to think of something you know about that would somehow fit the topic. No matter how obtuse the topic is, use transitions and segues and try to twist the speech so that you can arrive at a topic you do know something about, and then go with that: Tell a funny story that you remember. Recite some lines from a play that you know. Talk about your cooking class. Say anything to get on familiar ground. It is only when people do not know what they are talking about that they will stall and stumble.
The Comments and Goals
You may be wondering why you should have to do the most difficult speech so early on in the study of Public Speaking. The answer is simple. By going through this together, your gifted class will develop a sense of trust (misery loves company, or something like that). You are not expected to sound like a professional speaker, but you can all try together. Besides, you have it out of the way now!
The Example
The group gives you the topic: "My most frightening moment was when..." You put your head down for thirty seconds and come up with something like this:
"The sun had gone behind the clouds that terrible day when my friend, Brian, talked me into downhill skiing for the first time. Half of the fun was getting up the hill on a towrope. As I fell only seven times, I knew that the small children didn't really mean to be cruel with their laughter."
"When I finally got to the top of the awesome majestic incline, I gazed down the valley for miles. My friend asked me what I thought of the bunny hill. I was crushed."
"I decided that this was not a very good idea so I began to bend down to take my boots off when my wonderful, dear friend gave me a push. Mothers for miles around covered their children's ears as I snowballed down the hill. There was only one lone tree at the bottom of the hill and my skis knew where it was."
"Yes, my most frightening moment came when skis met bark. Some bunny hill!"
Resource:
Parker, Douglas A. Basic Public Speaking, 2nd Edition- The Roadmap to Confident Communications! (ISBN: 0-7388-5619-3). 2001. Xlibris, Random House Ventures.
