ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF MEMORIZING SPEECHES

Some of the most highly successful speakers carefully wrote out, revised, and committed to memory important passages in their speeches.  These they dexterously wove into the body of their addresses in such a natural manner as not to expose their method.

This plan, however, is not to be generally recommended, since few men have the faculty of rendering memorized parts so as to make them appear extempore.  If you recite rather than speak to an audience, you may be a good entertainer, but just to that degree will you impair your power and effectiveness as a public speaker.

There are speakers who have successfully used the plan of committing to memory significant sentences, statements, or sayings, and skilfully embodying them in their speeches.  You might test this method for yourself, tho it is attended with danger.

If possible, join a local debating society, where you will have excellent opportunity for practise in thinking and speaking on your feet.  Many distinguished public speakers have owed their fluency of speech and self-confidence to early practise in debate.

THE VALUE OF REPETITION

Persuasion is a task of skill.  You must bring to your aid in speaking every available resource.  An effective weapon at times is a “remorseless iteration.”  Have the courage to repeat yourself as often as may be necessary to impress your leading ideas upon the minds of your hearers.  Note the forensic maxim, “tell a judge twice whatever you want him to hear; tell a special jury thrice, and a common jury half a dozen times, the view of a case you wish them to entertain.”

THE NEED OF SELF-CONFIDENCE

Whatever methods of premeditation you adopt in the preparation of a speech, having planned everything to the best of your ability, dismiss from your mind all anxiety and all thought about yourself.

Right preparation and earnest practise should give you a full degree of confidence in your ability to perform the task before you.  When you stand at last before the audience, it should be with the assurance that you are thoroughly equipped to say something of real interest and importance.

THE POWER OF PERSONALITY

Personality plays a vital part in a speaker’s success.  Gladstone described Cardinal Newman’s manner in the pulpit as unsatisfactory if considered in its separate parts.  “There was not much change in the inflection of his voice; action there was none; his sermons were read, and his eyes were always on his book; and all that, you will say, is against efficiency in preaching.  Yes; but you take the man as a whole, and there was a stamp and a seal upon him, there was solemn music and sweetness in his tone, there was a completeness in the figure, taken together with the tone and with the manner, which made even his delivery such as I have described it, and tho exclusively with written sermons, singularly attractive.”