My Speech

Good Afternoon. My name is Daisy and I’m going to be speaking for the next 4 minutes about how to talk for 3 minutes. I will be covering topics and techniques as well as reasons why the ability to talk for 3 minutes is a crucial skill.

The beauty of the 3 minute speech is that it can in essence be about anything. Because of the brevity however it is essential to pick a subject without too much complexity or to choose a single component of the larger topic.

For a more formal level of speech some preparation should be involved in the topic selection process. It is important to start off with more information that could be covered in a 3 minute period to ensure that even with forgotten pieces of information the 3 minute mark is achievable. From the total selection of information you should then choose the most important pieces of information. Think of this as how you would explain your topic given 15-30 seconds. This also becomes handy later for given your speech an introduction. These are the points about your topic that you consider to be the backbone of your speech. Using it shuffle your information around into categories to cover your 15 second scenario points.

In more informal situations and when discussing things you are very familiar with it is possible to use a more fluid technique requiring less preparation. This method relies heavily upon mental agility about the topic. I personally call this method the ‘peg’ method.

Named after a primary school punishment for talking in the back row the ‘peg’ method is designed on the idea of a single point of stimulus from which the speech must flow. In the original context the student would be given an object from the teachers box of trinkets, most memorably a small white peg, and be required to talk for 2 minutes. Understandably this was not necessarily a successful affair. Unfamiliarity with the centre point of the speech often led to heavy reliance upon pauses punctuated by umm or arr as well as stilted topic development and large jumps in logic. Because of this I would not recommended this method for speeches outside of a peer level.

Another more fluid method of speech would be the story method. This as with telling a story means starting at the beginning and running through to an end point. This can be used for less argumentative styled speeches. They are less effective at emphasising any one particular point and can characterised by poor outlined introductions. They do however give your audience a good representation of the connections in your topic or the journey taken from point A to point B.

Now why would you bother to master the art of the 3 minute speech at all? Surely being able to talk for a few minutes at a time doesn’t really help you do anything much… Except procrastinate with your friends or tell somebody about the fun day you had Both of which you are perfectly capable of already without any excessive practice… However how about explaining yourself, whether it be in a good or a bad context, to a boss or superior… Given a short and direct instruction or explanation to a larger group whether they are peers or more critically subordinates. You need to be aware of you own abilities when speaking in order to give a good impression of yourself.

All of the aspects of a 3 minute speech are the same as those for a 5, 10 or even 30 minute speech only in a less complex capacity. By training yourself out of bad habits in the 3 minute time frame it becomes more easy for you to transfer your skills onto the longer speeches without committing too many faux pars. Bad habits such as resorting to umm or arr are accentuated by the length and complexity of a speech and topic. It is only by practicing on the shorter speeches that you can minimise and aim at eliminating such a tendency.

Well I have given you a brief 4 minute look in to the hows and whys of 3 minute speeches. Hopefully this will make you appreciate the reasoning behind the practice just a little bit more.

One of those delightful assessment tasks you do because you have to do… I got stuck we a pretty dodgey topic because i did my initial 3 minute speech on how to talk for three minutes (didn’t prepare perhaps the way i might have had i realised I’d be stuck with the same topic for our assessable version).