Sooner or later, you'll have to face giving an oral presentation. It may be in college, as part of a class project. Or it may be on the job, when your boss asks you to explain at next Monday's staff meeting what you learned on your visit to a client in Cincinnati last week. You'll do best in such a situation and feel much less anxiety over it, if you first do a thorough job of careful preparation. That's what this chapter is about.

There are whole books and courses, of course, on "how to give an effective speech." Here we're talking about the kind of five or ten-minute talks that most of us are typically asked to do.

Following these eight steps will help you give a short but effective talk:

Size up the situation

.

Write out a rough draft of your talk

.

Outline your talk from your draft - start planning your visuals

.

Decide on props and visuals

.

Practice

.

Deliver the talk

.

Answer Questions Carefully

.

Get feedback

.

For Practice :

Choose one of the paper topics you have written about in your composition class this semester and do all the advance planning for giving a seven-minute informal talk on the subject to your instructor and your classmates. Write out your plan, including, for example, a brief analysis of the room and the audience, a brief statement of purpose, a rough draft of the talk, note cands and whatever visuals you would plan to use.

For Writing :

After you have gotten feedback on the planning package you prepared in the' previous exercise, revise your talk and give the speech.