Preparing & Delivering Introduction
Actual practice in preparation and delivery of introductions should follow. These should be delivered before the class and should proceed no farther than the adequate introduction to the hearers of the topic of the speech. They need not be so fragmentary as to occupy only three seconds. By supposing them to be beginnings of speeches from six to fifteen minutes long these remarks may easily last from one to two minutes.
"They need not be so fragmentary as to occupy only three seconds."
Aside from the method of its delivery—pose, voice, speed, vocabulary, sentences—each introduction should be judged as an actual introduction to a real speech. Each speaker should keep in mind these questions to apply during his preparation. Each listener should apply them as he hears the introduction delivered.
Is the topic introduced gracefully?
Is it introduced clearly?
Is the introduction too long?
Does it begin too far away from the topic?
Is it interesting?
Has it any defects of material?
Has it any faults of manner?
Can any of it be omitted?
Do you want to hear the entire speech?
Can you anticipate the material?
Is it adapted to its audience?
Is it above their heads?
Is it beneath their intelligences?
Topics for these exercises in delivering introductions should be furnished by the interests, opinions, ideas, experiences, ambitions of the students themselves. Too many beginning speakers cause endless worry for themselves, lower the quality of their speeches, bore their listeners, by "hunting" for things to talk about, when near at hand in themselves and their activities lie the very best things to discuss. The over-modest feeling some people have that they know nothing to talk about is usually a false impression.
In Elizabethan England a young poet, Sir Phillip Sidney, decided to try to tell his sweetheart how much he loved her. So he "sought fit words, studying inventions fine, turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow, some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain." But "words came halting forth" until he bit his truant pen and almost beat himself for spite. Then said the Muse to him, "Fool, look in thy heart and write." And without that first word, this is the advice that should be given to all speakers.
"Look in your heart, mind, life, experiences, ideas, ideals, interests, enthusiasms, and from them draw the material of your speeches—yours because no one else could make that speech, so essentially and peculiarly is it your own."
The following may serve as suggestions of the kind of topic to choose and the various methods of approaching it. They are merely hints, for each student must adapt his own method and material.