Rate and pauses

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From the course by University of Washington

Introduction to Public Speaking

405 ratings

University of Washington

Introduction to Public Speaking

405 ratings

Course 1 of 4 in the Specialization Dynamic Public Speaking

This course gives you a reliable model for preparing and delivering effective presentations. In business, in school, and in public life, we are often called upon to “make a few comments.” Often, people tasked with such speeches become flummoxed. They might not know what to talk about, or ramble without making a point, or simply be confusing to listen to. This course is designed to help you shine where others falter. We’ll learn how organize talks clearly, write them memorably, and deliver them confidently. By the end of the course, you should be able to significantly reduce your fear of public speaking, use rehearsal techniques to develop a strong, vibrant speaking voice, and perform speeches with dynamic movement and gestures. The speech model that we’ll practice is useful for briefings, elevator talks, interviews, and even as a structure for hour-long presentations. If you’re a beginner, this course will help you quickly master the fundamentals of speaking. If you’re a seasoned speaker, this course will help you better understand public speaking and push you to the next level.

From the lesson

Week 4: Overcoming your fear of public speaking and developing great delivery

This week, we'll discuss speech apprehension and delivery. I know the fear of public speaking is a pressing topic for many. Why didn’t we start the course with this? Because I think many delivery concerns go away if the invention and arrangement are good. However, invention and arrangement are just part of the equation - now we can supercharge our delivery. By the end of this week, you’ll have some techniques for combating those butterflies and speaking confidently. If you want some feedback, you’ll be able to upload a practice key point speech for peer review.

Rate and pauses5:58

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Matt McGarrity
Principal Lecturer
UW Department of Communication

This video will talk about three ways to use rate, repetition, and

pauses to clarify your message and direct listeners to the important content.

A number of years ago,

there was this really interesting study of Swedish politicians and newsreaders.

The newsreaders are the on-camera television journalists

who read the evening news.

Basically, they were looking at professional speakers.

And these professional speakers were putting pauses in for attention and focus.

They were using rate and pausing to emphasize ideas.

And this is along with something we coach in speech.

We want our rate and pauses to make our meaning clear.

And maybe one way to think about this is

imagine someone was trying to take notes on your speeches you are giving.

It don't matter if someone's actually trying to do this or not.

It's more a way of thinking about where you need to slow down,

where you can speed up, where you need to direct the audiences' attention.

So if your audience members were taking notes,

how could you cue to them an important line was coming?

How could you do that without saying, by the way, write down what I'm about to say.

Well, rate, repetition and pauses are great tools here.

So what are some of these techniques?

First, deliver important lines more slowly, okay.

So in a key point speech, your topic or your thesis, and

certainly your key points,

should probably all sound different from all the other lines in the speech.

Why? Because the thesis and

the key points are the weight bearing sentences in your speech structure.

These are the lines that the audience needs to hear and

understand as important, so they should probably be slower.

So for example, in my preview of key points,

whenever I do that, I do it in the introduction.

That preview's probably one of the slowest lines I have.

Why? Because that preview's doing

really important work for me in a speech.

It's getting the audience ready for everything I'm going to talk about.

I want them to hear and understand that line as important.

If they were taking notes, they would hear it and go I've gotta write that down.

Second, use pauses and repetition to direct attention.

So pauses normally cue us in that something's coming,

and a brief pause can reorient the audience and really prime their attention.

So for example, you say something like,

there are two really important take aways from this research, two really big ones.

So first, I don't know what that research is,

that sounds like it might be fascinating, but that's an example.

But that slowing down and priming helps direct attention where you want it.

Also some small repetition there, can amplify the effect.

All right, so there are two really important takeaways from this research,

two, two big ones.

So first.

Again I don't know what that is, but that whole sentence there,

that's a really big build up signaling something important is about to be said.

And if you did something like that, even if you had an audience member who was

maybe only kind of paying attention, they could hear that line,

maybe not notice it, maybe the slow repetition, he's like hm, what's this now?

Right? So, pauses and repetition are good tools,

but you don't want to abuse them.

You can't keep doing big pregnant pauses for everything.

The talk will sound exhaustively over dramatic.

You gotta use them appropriately.

And that means you have to decide where you're going to spend

the very limited resource of your audience's attention.

Finally, privilege the intonation unit.

So where I'm speaking more slowly with pauses on important lines is deliberate,

this is more sort of a background concern.

So the intonation unit is important.

As we've discussed, it's how we want to hear and process chunks of talk.

So if you break up the intonation unit, you're going to sound less fluent,

and the audience is going to have a slightly harder time processing the idea.

Not a hugely harder time, I'm talking milliseconds here.

It's not like you're going to be in your talk and say in the middle of

an intonation unit and they're going to be like no, I'm so confused.

I was following the talk but now night is day, up is down.

Right, it's not going to drive them over the edge okay, that not going to happen.

But what we do want to do is we want to be aware as much as possible,

of where we're putting our pauses.

We want to avoid breaking up that intonation unit.

So if I'm speaking, for example, if I'm speaking and I put the pause in the middle

of a phrase, but then actually, I don't pause at the next intonation boundary and

I keep going until I finally run out.

Well, that's significantly harder to understand, okay?

So we don't want that.

That's monkeying around with the intonation units.

If you can envision them as a curve, or as a shape as much as possible,

I want to put the intonation unit boundaries where I'm putting in my pauses.

Now I know that's easier said than done.

That's undoubtable and it's especially difficult if you're a non-native speaker,

if you're delivering a speech in your non-native language.

So in those cases, I generally advise people to speak maybe a little bit slower,

just give themselves just that extra millisecond of processing time to figure

out what they're going to say so they can avoid breaking off a thought midstream.

And I think it's even better if you have to have lots of pauses in there,

I think it's better to have longer pauses between intonation units.

So basically you sit longer in the pause rather than start at an intonation unit,

start a sentence before you're ready and

have to take a pause in the middle of it to gather your thoughts.

So at a basic level, we want our audience to easily comprehend our message and

understand its important parts.

Now rate, repetition and pauses are invaluable tools in this effort.

Slow down for the important lines, have pauses that can direct attention,

but avoid having pauses that are going to make the phrase harder to process.

[MUSIC]

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