Video Transcript: How To Remember Your Speech (Andrew Bryant)

Video Transcript: How To Remember Your Speech (Andrew Bryant)

Knowing your stuff, if you know the material, then you can have the freedom to work with the audience handle questions, be creative. If you're constantly anxious about to what I'm going to say next, then the whole presentation is stiff, and boring. So I talked in an earlier video about why, what how, what's next? But how do you memorize a speech, when I first started presenting, I would write the entire speech out in longhand. Now, obviously, that's somewhat tedious, but it does cause you to learn it. And when I first started presenting, I would walk up and down the street actually talking out loud to myself to make sure that I really had learnt it. Has I got better at presenting I would firstly write out longhand. And then I would cut down to key points. And some people have used cards, I highly recommend not using cards, that they'll get in the way of your gestures, which we've talked about previously. But by doing the preparation, writing it out, then cutting it down to key points. 

PowerPoint's actually a great, great tool because you can actually get your key points on slides. And notice how they flow together. And then you're using the visual part of your brain that allows things to sequentially flow. But the key message here is know what you're going to talk about. Now, unless you're presenting Shakespeare where people in the audience are going to follow along with the text. Nobody knows what you're going to say next. So if you miss a bit, or if you jump a spot, you can always go back because nobody knows the script, except you. So you don't need to let them know that you missed a bit. Unless you say, Oh, you know, let me just step back from that. And just give you another piece of information before we move forwards. And then it just becomes natural. But you have this freedom only if you know your content. Remember, as I've said before, prior planning prevents poor performance.