15. Telling a joke
1. Choose a joke about a topic you can relate to.
2. Determine your take on the topic.
3. Examine the structure of the joke.
4. Study successful comedians.
5. Memorize your joke.
6. Practice your joke.
7. Know your audience.
8. Tell your joke with confidence!
16. Table Topics
Timed (2 minutes)!
Friendly contest.
“Think and speak on your feet”
Sensible, worthwhile ideas
Try humor
Organize your thoughts
Examples:
Give an opinion, and then justify it with two or three
specific reasons.
State a problem and show its causes.
State a goal or problem and then tell what must be done to
achieve the goal or solve the problem.
17. Elements of a good speech:
• Organization
• Content
• Delivery
• Enthusiasm
• Appearance
• Timing
Notas del editor
To inform: transmitting information. Examples include training, reporting, teaching, interviewing, and presenting.The second reason we speak is to influence. A ready example of this is library advocacy, or marketing. Outreach would fall under this branch, too, if you were going out to community organizations and asking them to support the library.3. The last reason is to entertain. Congratulatory speeches and awards might fall under this category, because you of course want to charm your audience. Earlier I showed a picture of a librarian conducting storytime, entertainment in its purest form.As the slides we just looked through show, public speaking is important to librarians in their day-to-day roles, and also to community members. Thus, today, we are going to provide you with a “toolkit” for facilitating public speaking workshops in your libraries.You may think of this two ways: one, you might want to share it with your staff, as an ELG (Employee Learning & Growth) opportunity, or it’s a program which you can offer to your community, and which is likely of interest not just to the business community, but also to anyone who is giving a toast at a wedding, or addressing their local schoolboard.
Making a toast!
Giving a eulogy.
Interviewing for a job.
Giving a business speech, or facilitating a meeting.
Or speaking to the community, at a rotary meeting, chamber of commerce meeting, schoolboard meeting, or an Occupy demonstration. Everyone has to speak sometimes, even if you’re anti-establishment.
Or accepting an award.
Who in the room is nervous when public speaking, or nervous about the prospect of public speaking? I myself have trouble sleeping the night before a presentation. I suppose there is the cliché or legend of dreaming that you’re in your underwear in front of a whole big audience. In fact, speech anxiety is the number one phobia in the US—41 percent of people are said to have what is known as “speech anxiety”.Fear manifests in two ways: it is both psychological and physiological. So how do you overcome speech anxiety?Public speaking fear is both psychological and physiological.
Relaxation techniques are one way to conquer the dread of giving a speech. These include visualization: picture yourself knocking it out of the park, your voice resonating through the speaking arena, the audience is smiling and nodding, and yes, applauding . . . You are so cool!And here we see SNL’s Stuary Smalley, the king of affirmations. “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough” is nothing to laugh at if it works for you.
Try yoga and breathing techniques. One author I read mentions breathing and picturing your breath giving you buoyancy and confidence.
In the past, having a drink before a speech was considered a good way to fend off nervous jitters. Not true! Alcohol is a depressant, and it slows your thinking. Some cases—at a wedding, for example, may warrant an exception. But mainly, the rule to remember is: steer clear of beer!
Organize your material logically. Run that by a friend—does this flow?Mastery and knowledge = self confidence. You won’t be worried about your speech if you know that you are the expert in the room.“Practice makes good enough”.How do you look?Arrive early. If you’ve never been to the venue before, maybe practice getting there. Arriving early allows you to scope out the room.Continuing the point of proper presentation, Julie is going to give some speaking tips. I want to leave you with a quote, from Gloria Steinem: “There is no right way to speak, only your way; you don’t die, and it’s worth it.”
2. Determine your take on the topic. For eg., jokes that start, did you ever notice how . . . ?3. Examine the sturcture: most jokes have a set up, and a punchline. Is there anything you need to act out?7. Know your audience: is this joke appropriate? Do they have all the background information? Is it culturally relevant?8. Tell your joke with confidence. Commit! Don’t make comments or asides, don’t laugh.
Table topics were developed by Toastmaters to help people to develop the ability to think and speak on your fee. This comes up all the time—job interviews, company meetings: eg. “What do you think of such and such?If you have the tendency to babble, this exercise is good for helping you to focus in on your thoughts
This is the rubric we’ll be using for today’s evaluations. (See hand out.)