Learning From Rehearsing My Contest Speech

It was 6:45am on a Tuesday morning, I walked into a room of 5 audiences, few of them were introducing themselves, and the room was still dimly lit. A woman walked in and turn on all the lights.

I greeted her, "Good morning, Melissa. Thanks for letting me rehearse my speech your Club". Few minutes later, my name was called upon and I began giving this speech:

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/d67995df0c2388863000bde8730d31f2/video/18827740

I bombed this at the Club. It was early morning and no ones is laughing. But I got a good lesson from this:

(1) Building Audience Rapport

I felt that I jumped in to the speech presentation with too much energy. At 7:00am, energy is low and people are warming up. So, I guess the best way to build rapport is to warm up with the audience, before I go on to a full blown speech.

Audience must be thinking..... "Why is this guy sooo... ENTHUSIASTIC!!!" :)

A mistake I will take note the very next time.

(2) Tell A Story NOT a Canned Speech

I rehearsed this speech so many times, that I could remember at the back of my head every word and where to pace throughout the speech. That's why everyone realized this is a canned speech.

Jeffrey evaluated me and provided me a good feedback. Change your speech a little here and there to regain freshness in your speech. Here are some of his recommendation:
- use "hip touches" instead of "elbow"
- change location from office kitchen to home kitchen
- character Jessica to Rebbecca

I recently listen to Ed Tate's speech and he mentioned about re-"live" the incident. Now I finally realized 2 things:

(i) what he meant when he say re-"live" the incident because that's the only way to regain freshness in the mind of the speaker and audiences.

(ii)what went wrong in my previous 2009 Division Humorous Speech Contest. I recalled now that I wasn't prepared for my Club and Area Contests but I was too prepared for my Division contest... maybe (I'm not 100% sure) that the reason why I was 2nd in the contest.

(3) Think About How To Make It Great

As many speakers do (and myself).... I felt in love with my speech. Some great recommendations to change my script were provided and initially I somewhat listen to critics and constructive feedback but I found it's a little difficult for me to change it cos...... I felt in love with my speech.... and there is a slight reluctance to amend the speech.

But I'll try to make good speech better... by testing and amending.

I wish I have time to make changes to my script so I'll be all ready for the upcoming Division E Humorous Speech Contest 2010 this coming Thursday (October 7th).

Cheers,
Kian