Oratory Oracles

In the fifth grade, I entered the school's Oratory Competition with a stellar essay. No awkward sentence structure, no idea overlap, nothing but beautifully composed, succinct ideas on paper. As I got up to deliver this speech that I had so painstakingly crafted in front of a very large crowd of parents and teachers, I felt ready to take over the world of composition... Until I started talking.

All the words I had put so much effort into automatically became empty-sounding and repetitive. Speaking on the microphone, my voice reverberated and sounded way too loud for the auditorium. I forgot the conclusion, and had to leave the stage after my last body paragraph.

Of course, I lost the contest. Dead last.

In retrospect, maybe I should've practiced. Maybe I should've tried talking into the mic a couple of times before the actual night of the contest, or practiced my diction, or memorization, or how to stay still during the talk. Maybe if I had written the speech earlier...?

Fortunately, I had a chance to redeem myself next year, and in following years: I won the Oratory Competition on two separate occasions, seventh and ninth grade. However, there are still little things I do that I wish I didn't: I still tend to cross one leg over the other, or fidget a little with my hair, or move around too much. I sometimes use verbal fillers, or speak choppily, and I need to concentrate in order to not mess up my English. Overall, however, I think I've improved slightly from that fifth-grade attempt at crafting a good speech.

I now know that the art of crafting a good speech is a mix of different elements: you can have really good content, but if the delivery isn't on par, it will detract from the overall impression that the audience gets from it. However, a speech can be very poor in content, and yet be delivered in such a way that fools the audience into thinking it's the best speech they've ever heard. It has to do with the three ingredients of the basic rhetorical recipe: ethos, pathos and logos.

I've realized that by combining the three, I can end up with a captivating speech, without necessarily going overboard or too deep with the content (a common mistake that I used to think I needed). In other words, if you sound too smart, you'll increase your ethos, but completely lose the other two elements.

For this following TED talk, my aim is to be able to craft interesting content, while at the same time controlling my delivery and style in order to engage the audience fully. Also, stop fidgeting. And practice beforehand. And, um, avoid verbal fillers.

Jeez. Thank God this isn't a competition.