Tips for giving a speech
  1. Remember that your purpose is twofold: to deliver information and to achieve understanding in your audience. In order to achieve these goals, you should become familiar with the appropriate information and you should organize it well.
  2. Avoid unclear language—for example, using the words "things", "this", "that", "they", "those", where the meaning is not clear, or where a specific noun or verb would be preferred. Example: "This explains why the other thing didn’t work."
  3. Explain graphs and figures adequately. It is all too common to have someone say "As you can see from this figure," before they even explain what is being shown, or what is being plotted versus what, and what one should expect to see from such a graph.
  4. Conclusions that say "I talked about this, and I talked about that, and I talked about that," are not informative. Be specific, even to the point of saying "The take home message is this."
  5. Avoid speaking so quietly that you can’t be heard. Don’t speak too quickly or in a monotone.
  6. Eye contact is important! Don’t speak to the screen. Look at the audience!
  7. Avoid using print that is too small to read on your overheads. Fonts that are readable on paper are NOT readable when projected. Font sizes of 18 to 24 point work well, with headings larger than other text. Do not stand in front of the projector in a way that will block people’s view.
  8. Prepare for your talk so that you will not be tempted to read from your paper or notecards. Your notes should be a list of items to discuss rather than comments written as complete sentences.
  9. PRACTICE your talk before hand!