Speaker
Who is a speaker? How is he different from a speaker?
Who is a speaker? Can any speaker be called a speaker?
- No.
Who is a speaker and who is not?
Example. Imagine a teacher is giving a lecture to students. Several people from the front row listen to him, some of the students pretend to take notes, the rest do whatever they want. Not an imaginary situation? This happens, and often.
Why don't we call this teacher a speaker ?
Because if he were a speaker , everyone would listen to him!
The speaker would see everyone, including those who pretend to listen but are doing other things.
The speaker would attract attention to himself.
What is the difference between a speaker and a speaker?
A speaker is not only gestures, voice, gaze...
The same thing that distinguishes a master from an amateur.
Each of us has cooked in the kitchen, but we don’t call everyone a cook or pastry chef.
A speaker may know everything about public speaking, but that will not make him a speaker, any more than reading a cookbook will make him a cook.
We call a confectioner a person who knows how to make delicious cakes.
And not the one who put on an apron and a chef's hat.
a speaker a person who knows how to make a speech that the public will enjoy. Pleasant for the ears, eyes and mind.
What is included in the art of eloquence
The energy of the word is truly limitless. The great orators of antiquity knew this well. But in order to hone your skills and master them perfectly, you need to learn how to manage your own speech well, know the techniques and methods with which you can keep the attention of your listeners “in your fist,” encourage them to action, and inspire confidence in them. And here everything is important: an effective gesture, a pause, stage entry into character, structure of phrases, figurative and expressive language means. Oratory makes it possible to convey your own thoughts to your interlocutors in such a way that they are understood and cause the reaction you want.
What kind of speaker is he?
The speaker sees everyone. Everyone, even if there are a lot of people in the hall.
A true speaker feels everyone. How do you feel about speech: some like it, some not so much, some don’t like it at all.
The speaker attracts attention. To yourself. To the topic of the speech. Strengthens and weakens this attention.
Also, the speaker monitors the perception of speech. Slows it down or speeds it up.
The speaker speaks clearly and understandably. And listeners not only understand this speech, but also remember it, in the form of words or images.
It's never boring with a speaker. Nobody notices how time passes.
Watching the speaker is a pleasure. Because the speaker himself enjoys the performance.
How to become a speaker?
There is a science called rhetoric. But, like any science, rhetoric is boring. It's difficult to learn from a book.
Like flowers and botany.
Botany is also a dry and boring science. And growing flowers is a fascinating activity. Young flower growers grow flowers without botany, but if problems arise, they immediately turn to science. And only then does botany become interesting and useful.
You can also speak without rhetoric. Young speakers do just that. When the speeches are easy and the listeners are grateful, speaking is easy even without special knowledge. Rhetoric comes in handy later, when the topics of speeches are boring, the audience is impatient, the responsibility is great, and there is no room for error.
That's when rhetoric helps. After all, the same problems were studied by orators two to three thousand years ago. Since the times of Cicero and Demosthenes, nothing has changed significantly in rhetoric.
The listeners remained the same. A little smarter and a little more impatient. But the same. They want pleasure for the mind, for the ears and for the eyes, as Cicero argued.
Learn oratory
A speaker has many skills.
A mathematician operates with numbers, a dancer masters movements, an artist imagines images and transfers them to canvas...
And the speaker?
The speaker presents his speech as it will be delivered. He feels every word before he speaks it.
Of course, the speaker does not immediately master this. Young speakers say everything without really thinking about the words. This skill comes with experience. From the need to speak so that they will listen.
The speaker not only sees each person, but also feels him at this moment.
This skill also comes with experience. But, unfortunately, not everyone. Without this feeling it is difficult to manage the audience.
The speaker has in his memory many told jokes, parables, stories.
And at the right time they themselves come to mind, helping to cheer up the audience. This is also the result of practice. It is necessary not only to read stories, parables and anecdotes, but also to tell them often so that they are remembered in the state of performance.
The speaker masters gestures and all body movements.
How the dancer wields them. How an acrobat wields them. First, the movements are studied, practiced, brought to automaticity and naturalness. During a performance, he no longer thinks about his movements, and has no doubt at all about how he looks from the outside.
The speaker does not speak - he talks to people.
Like with best friends. This is a dialogue, even if there is silence in the hall. The speaker sees the response of each of his words in the eyes, smiles, nods... However, there are other threads invisible to the eye that connect each viewer with the speaker.
How to learn this?
Young speaker masters gestures
This can only be learned through practice. Perform, perform, and perform again!
And the sooner you start learning, the better!
Make mistakes (useful for research purposes), run into problems. Look for answers in wise books or ask experienced speakers. And again - to perform!
for a speaker to master many skills.
Some skills are clearly speaker skills: words, intonation, gestures, impromptu, emotions and others... Some skills take roots from other sciences. It is useful for a speaker to know philosophy and psychology. Acting skills don't hurt either. Erudition will also be a big plus.
But what about a speaker without a healthy and beautiful body? Sports are simply necessary for a speaker.
So you can list many sciences that will be useful to the speaker. And the more skills a speaker has, the better he will perform.
But what if the young speaker does not yet know everything and has not mastered all the skills?
This is how the speaker's style emerges. Some rely on beautiful words, others on beautiful gestures. Some people give only prepared and rehearsed speeches, while others will learn to think about the words while speaking, and therefore can allow themselves to be completely impromptu.
But the criterion for a speaker’s performance will not be these skills, but the reaction of people to the speech. You can only do so much and still make an impression on the public. Use a minimum of skills, but get maximum results.
The audience pays the speaker with emotions, questions and applause. The time spent with a good speaker is not noticed.
From the outside it seems that performing is very easy. The way it is.
What to pay attention to: what to talk about and how to talk
We found out what the meaning of the word speaker includes. Where to start to develop the necessary properties? First, pay attention to the content of your speech and its euphony. Secondly, on frequently used vocabulary and intonation. Thirdly, on the richness of the vocabulary and the correctness and clarity of diction. The Great Demosthenes is a wonderful example of this. As we know from history, he was afraid of public speaking; his speech was sluggish, boring, inexpressive, tongue-tied, and lacking external expressiveness. To correct these shortcomings, he titanically “reshaped” himself, re-educated, worked hard and persistently. As a result, Demosthenes became a model of the perfection of eloquence. Cicero, Aristotle, Xenophon and other bright personalities of antiquity still evoke our admiration and serve as role models. A sense of humor, broad-mindedness, personal charm, impeccable literacy, perfect clarity of thought - without these qualities there cannot be a strong speaker. Lawyer A.F. Koni, one of the most interesting personalities of the 19th century, is also a worthy example to study and emulate in the art of oratory.
Learn to speak if you want to be heard and understood!
It is easy for a good speaker to speak.
Just like a good artist paints a portrait. How a good musician plays instruments.
A friend came and sat down at my synthesizer and played “Moonlight Sonata.” Easy and relaxed. It would seem, what could be simpler? Fingers glide over the keys. After her I tried. For some reason it didn't work out. No way. Despite the fact that I know the notes and can play. But just being able to do it is not enough for mastery.
Many people performed on stage. But we will not call each a speaker.
At the end of the article, I will write that we train speakers both in live trainings (this is the best type of training) and online (individually via Skype). If you have the opportunity to come to the training, we will teach public speaking. If this is not possible, sign up for online training:
- Online public speaking training
If you don't want to learn, read on. This site has a lot of useful information for both beginning speakers and experienced speakers. Read the next page of the book or choose interesting pages from the table of contents of the book.
Sincerely, rhetoric coach Oleg Bolsunov.
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Interesting facts about Demosthenes
Demosthenes was born in Ancient Greece, in the city of Athens. Despite the fact that at that time the skill of eloquence was known to the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Indians, Hellas is the birthplace of oratory.
The whole life of Ancient Greece was saturated with the speeches of orators: generals gave incendiary speeches to the troops, politicians spoke at council meetings and mass gatherings, citizens who were guilty of something, through their ability to speak, defended their rights in court, and any person, wishing so, could perform at a friendly meeting, funeral or celebration. And by and large, the ability to express oneself eloquently for every person was by no means a whim, but a vital necessity.
There were quite a few genres of public speeches, but the deliberative genre of speech was the most popular and significant; in other words, political eloquence was especially valued. If the speaker achieved success in his business, the prospects of obtaining a good position in the government apparatus and even the opportunity to go as ambassador to another country opened up before him. And there is nothing strange in the fact that Demosthenes dreamed of becoming an orator since childhood.
Demosthenes’ father (by the way, his namesake) was a representative of the respected bourgeois class and the owner of two workshops, where several dozen slaves made furniture and weapons. When Demosthenes was seven years old, his father died, leaving his sister and himself a substantial fortune. But the people who were entrusted with the responsibility of raising young orphans (Demosthenes’ sister was only five years old at that time) were not only selfish and greedy in nature, but did not take any part in their upbringing, and, accordingly, there could be no payment for teachers out of the question. So, Demosthenes was a weak child and lagging behind in physical development, and also seriously stuttered and burbled.
Even in adolescence, Demosthenes persuaded his teacher to take him to a court hearing at which one of the famous orators spoke. The applause and delight of the audience, captivated by the speaker, then made an indelible impression on Demosthenes. This, in fact, served as the motivation for him to study public speaking on his own.
Considering that there were more than enough people teaching eloquence in Athens at that time, Demosthenes was able to find a mentor. For four years he was a student of Isei, a man who had the status of one of the best teachers in oratory. It was from Isaeus that Demosthenes subsequently adopted the manner of asking rhetorical questions, the strict logic of proof, meaningfulness, conciseness and simplicity of style.
During his studies, Demosthenes became properly acquainted with the works of eminent philosophers and historians such as Plato and Thucydides. Demosthenes rewrote Thucydides’ “History” with his own hand eight times, which is why he managed to learn it by heart.
Subsequently, Demosthenes, like many other speakers of that era, including Isaeus, initially began to write judicial speeches for other speakers, and only after successfully completing this task did he move on to his public speeches. But this is where the story gets even more interesting.
