This means that you want to avoid having your presentation come across as didactic or overly exaggerated. It’s a style that approaches the way you normally express yourself in a much smaller group than your classroom audience. And since delivery is only as good as the practice that goes into it, we conclude with some tips for effective use of your practice time.Ĭonversational style is a speaker’s ability to sound expressive and to be perceived by the audience as natural.
In this section of the chapter, we will explain six elements of good delivery: conversational style, conversational quality, eye contact, vocalics, physical manipulation, and variety. Although numerous scholars, including Mehrabian himself, have stated that his findings are often misinterpreted (Mitchell), scholars and speech instructors do agree that nonverbal communication and speech delivery are extremely important to effective public speaking. Specifically, Mehrabian is often credited with finding that when audiences decoded a speaker’s meaning, the speaker’s face conveyed 55 percent of the information, the vocalics conveyed 38 percent, and the words conveyed just 7 percent (Mehrabian, 1972). Many writers on the nonverbal aspects of delivery have cited the findings of psychologist Albert Mehrabian, asserting that the bulk of an audience’s understanding of your message is based on nonverbal communication. Most audiences prefer delivery that combines a certain degree of formality with the best attributes of good conversation-directness, spontaneity, animation, vocal and facial expressiveness, and a lively sense of communication (Lucas, 2009). Good delivery…conveys the speaker’s ideas clearly, interestingly, and without distracting the audience. Good delivery is a process of presenting a clear, coherent message in an interesting way. The more you care about your topic, the greater your motivation to present it well.