Public Speaking Part 21

8. Coaching from the bench should be forbidden in baseball.

9. Compulsory military drill should be introduced into all educational inst.i.tutions.

10. Partic.i.p.ation in athletics lowers the scholarship of students.

11. Pupils should receive credit in school for music lessons outside.

12. The United States should abandon the Monroe Doctrine.

13. In jury trials, a three-fourths vote should be enough for the rendering of a verdict.

14. Strikes are unprofitable.

15. Commercial courses should be offered in all high schools.

16. Employers of children under sixteen should be required to provide at least eight hours of instruction a week for them.

17. Current events should be studied in all history or civics courses.

18. The practice of Christmas giving should be discontinued.

19. School buildings should be used as social centers.

20. Bring to cla.s.s an editorial and an outline of it. Put the outline upon the board, or read it to the cla.s.s. Then read the editorial.

Speaking from the Brief. Now that the brief is finished so that it represents exactly the material and development of the final speech, how shall it be used? To use it as the basis of a written article to be memorized is one method. Many speakers have employed such a method, many today do. The drawbacks of such memorizing have already been hinted at in an early chapter. If you want to grow in mental grasp, alertness, and power as a result of your speech training avoid this method. No matter how halting your first attempts may be, do not get into the seemingly easy, yet r.e.t.a.r.ding habit of committing to memory.

Memorizing has a decided value, but for speech-making the memory should be trained for larger matters than verbal reproduction. It should be used for the retention of facts while the other brain faculties are engaged in manipulating them for the best effect and finding words to express them forcefully. Memory is a helpful faculty.

It should be cultivated in connection with the powers of understanding and expression, but it is not economical to commit a speech verbatim for delivery. The remarks will lack flexibility, spontaneity, and often direct appeal. There is a detached, mechanical air about a memorized speech which helps to ruin it.

With the outline before you, go over it carefully and slowly, mentally putting into words and sentences the entries you have inserted. You may even speak it half aloud to yourself, if that fixes the treatment more firmly in your mind. Then place the brief where you can reach it with your eye, and speak upon your feet. Some teachers recommend doing this before a mirror, but this is not always any help, unless you are conscious of awkward poses or gestures or movements, or facial contortions. Say the speech over thus, not only once but several times, improving the phraseology each time, changing where convenient or necessary, the emphasis, the amount of time, for each portion.

Self-criticism. Try to criticize yourself. This is not easy at first, but if you are consistent and persistent in your efforts you will be able to judge yourself in many respects. If you can induce some friend whose opinion is worth receiving either to listen to your delivery or to talk the whole thing over with you, you will gain much. In conference with the teacher before your delivery of the speech such help will be given. As you work over your brief in this manner you will be delighted to discover suddenly that you need refer to it less and less frequently. Finally, the outline will be in your mind, and when you speak you can give your entire attention to the delivery and the audience.

Do not be discouraged if you cannot retain all the outline the first times you try this method. Many a speaker has announced in his introduction, "I shall present four reasons," and often has sat down after discussing only three. Until you can dispense entirely with the brief keep it near you. Speak from it if you need it. Portions which you want to quote exactly (such as quotations from authorities) may be memorized or read. In reading be sure you read remarkably well. Few people can read interestingly before a large audience. Keep your papers where you can get at them easily. Be careful not to lose your place so that you will have to shuffle them to get the cue for continuing. Pauses are not dangerous when they are made deliberately for effect, but they are ruinous when they betray to the audience forgetfulness or embarra.s.sment on the part of the speaker. Antic.i.p.ate your need. Get your help before you actually need it, so that you can continue gracefully.

Results. This method, followed for a few months, will develop speaking ability. It produces results suited to modern conditions of all kinds of life. It develops practically all the mental faculties and personal attributes. It puts the speaker directly in touch with his audience.

It permits him to adapt his material to an occasion and audience. It gives him the opportunity to sway his hearers and used legitimately for worthy ends, this is the most worthy purpose of any speech.

CHAPTER IX

EXPLAINING

The part which explanation plays in all phases of life is too apparent to need any emphasis here. It is to a great extent the basis of all our daily intercourse, from explaining to a teacher why a lesson has not been prepared, to painstakingly explaining to a merchant why a bill has not been paid. An instructor patiently explains a problem to a cla.s.s, and a merchant explains the merits of an article or the operation of a device to his customers. The politician explains why he should be elected. The financier explains the returns from stock and bond purchases. The President explains to the Senate the reason for treaty clauses. The minister explains the teachings of his faith to his congregation. You can make this list as long as the varied activities of all life.

Exposition. This kind of discourse, the purpose of which is explanation, is also called exposition. Has it any relation to the underlying idea of the term _exposition_ as applied to a great exhibition or fair? Its purpose is plainly information, the transmission of knowledge. While description and narration exist primarily to entertain, exposition exists to convey information.

Description and narration may be cla.s.sed as literature of entertainment; exposition as literature of knowledge. It answers such questions as how? why? for what purpose? in what manner? by what method? It can sometimes be used to convince a person with opposing views, for frequently you hear a man to whom the explanation of a belief has been made, exclaim, "Oh, if that's what you mean, I agree with you entirely." All instruction, all directions of work, all scientific literature, are in foundation expository. In its simplest, most disconnected form, exposition gives its value to that most essential volume, the dictionary.

Make a list of other kinds of books which are mainly or entirely expository in character.

Difficulties in Exposition. Such are the purpose and use of exposition. The difficulty of producing good exposition is evident from those two factors. As it, exists everywhere, as it purposes to inform, its first requisite is clearness. Without that quality it is as nothing. When you direct a stranger how to reach a certain building in your town, of what value are your remarks unless they are clear?

When a scientist writes a treatise on the topic of the immortality of man, of what value are his opinions unless his statements are clear?

All the other qualities which prose may and should possess sink into subordinate value in exposition when compared with clearness. Because of all three phases of exposition--its universal use, its informative purpose, its essential clarity--exposition is an all-important topic for the consideration and practice of the public speaker. In its demand for clearness lies also its difficulty. Is it easy to tell the exact truth, not as a moral exercise, but merely as a matter of exactness? Why do the careless talkers speak so often of "a sort of pink" or "a kind of revolving shaft" or tack on at the end of phrases the meaningless "something" or "everything" except that even in their unthinking minds there is the hazy impression--they really never have a well-defined idea--that they have not said exactly what they want to say?

Clear Understanding. Here then is the first requisite for the public speaker. He must have no hazy impressions, no unthinking mind, no ill-defined ideas, no inexactness. He must have a clear understanding of all he tries to tell to others. Without this the words of a speaker are as sounding bra.s.s and tinkling cymbals. Or he may deliver a great roar of words signifying nothing. This is the fault with most recitations of pupils in school--they do not get a clear understanding of the material a.s.signed to them for mastery. As a test of the degree of understanding, the recitation method serves admirably. The lecture method of instruction--clear though the presentation may be--offers no manner of finding out, until the final examination, how much the pupil actually understands. So far, in public speaking, the only way of learning that the student understands the principles and can apply them is to have him speak frequently to indicate his ability. Can you not name among your a.s.sociates and friends those whose explanations are lucid, concise, direct, unconfusing, and others whose attempts at exposition are jumbled, verbose, unenlightening?

Have you not criticized certain teachers by remarking "they may know their own subjects all right, but they couldn't impart their knowledge to the cla.s.s"?

Command of Language. What was lacking in their case? Certainly, to be charitable, we cannot say they lacked a clear understanding of their own topic. It must have been something else. That second element, which is at times almost entirely absent when the first is present, is the command of language. Many a man knows a great deal but is incapable of transmitting his knowledge. He lacks the gift of expression. He has not cultivated it--for it can be cultivated. The man whose desire or vocation forces him to make the effort to speak will train himself in methods of communication, until he arrives at comfort and fluency.

The district manager of a large electric company related that as he would sit at a meeting of the directors or committee of a large corporation and realized that the moment was approaching when he would be called upon to speak he would feel his senses grow confused, a sinking feeling amounting almost to faintness would sweep over him.

Strong in his determination to do the best he could for his company he would steady his nerves by saying to himself, "You know more about this matter than any of these men. That's why you are here. Tell them what you know so plainly that they will understand as well as you do."

There was, you see, the rea.s.surance of complete understanding of the subject coupled with the endeavor to express it clearly. These two elements, then, are of supreme significance to the public speaker.

Even to the person who desires to write well, they are all-important.

To the speaker they are omnipresent. The effect of these two upon the intellectual development is marked. The desire for clear understanding will keep the mind stored with material to a.s.similate and communicate. It will induce the mind continually to manipulate this material to secure clarity in presentation. This will result in developing a mental adroitness of inestimable value to the speaker, enabling him to seize the best method instantaneously and apply it to his purposes. At the same time, keeping always in view the use of this material as the basis of communicating information or convincing by making explanations, he will be solicitous about his language. Words will take on new values. He will be continually searching for new ones to express the exact differences of ideas he wants to convey. He will try different expressions, various phrases, changed word orders, to test their efficacy and appropriateness in transferring his meaning to his hearers. Suggestions offered in the chapter of this book on words and sentences will never cease to operate in his thinking and speaking. There will be a direct result in his ability as a speaker and a reflex result upon his ability as a thinker. What is more encouraging, he will realize and appreciate these results himself, and his satisfaction in doing better work will be doubled by the delight in knowing exactly how he secured the ends for which he strove.

Methods of Explaining. In order to make a matter clear, to convey information, a speaker has at his disposal many helpful ways of arranging his material. Not all topics can be treated in all or even any certain one of the following manners, but if the student is familiar with certain processes he will the more easily and surely choose just that one suited to the topic he intends to explain and the circ.u.mstances of his exposition.

Division. One of these methods is by division. A speaker may separate a topic or term into the parts which comprise it. For instance, a scientist may have to list all the kinds of electricity; a Red Cross instructor may divide all bandages into their several kinds; an athletic coach may have to explain all the branches of sports in order to induce more candidates to appear for certain events; a banker may have to divide financial operations to make clear an advertising pamphlet soliciting new lines of business, such as drawing up of wills.

The ability to do this is a valuable mental accomplishment as well as an aid to speaking. In dividing, care must be taken to make the separations according to one principle for any one cla.s.s. It would not result in clearness to divide all men according to height, and at the same time according to color. This would result in confusion. Divide according to height first, then divide the cla.s.ses so formed according to color if needed--as might be done in military formation. Each group, then, must be distinctly marked off from all other groups. In scientific and technical matters such division may be carried to the extreme limit of completeness. Complete division is called cla.s.sification.

Part.i.tion. In non-scientific compositions such completeness is seldom necessary. It might even defeat the purpose by being too involved, by including too many entries, and by becoming difficult to remember.

Speakers seldom have need of cla.s.sification, but they often do have to make divisions for purposes of explanation. This kind of grouping is called part.i.tion. It goes only so far as is necessary for the purpose at the time. It may stop anywhere short of being complete and scientifically exact. All members of the large cla.s.s not divided and listed are frequently lumped together under a last heading such as _all others, miscellaneous, the rest, those not falling under our present examination_.

EXERCISES

1. Cla.s.sify games. Which principle will you use for your first main division--indoor and outdoor games, or winter and summer games, or some other?

2. Cla.s.sify the races of men. What principle would you use?

3. How would you arrange the books in a private library?

4. Cla.s.sify the forms of theatrical entertainments. Is your list complete?

5. Cla.s.sify branches of mathematics. The entries may total over a hundred.

6. Cla.s.sify the pupils in your school.

7. Cla.s.sify the people in your school. Is there any difference?

8. Cla.s.sify the following:

The political parties of the country.

Methods of transportation.