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The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein onlineXI FLUENCY THROUGH PREPARATIONpage 3 of 3 | page 1 | table of contents QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. What advantages has the fluent speaker over the hesitating talker? 2. What influences, within and without the man himself, work against fluency? 3. Select from the daily paper some topic for an address and make a three-minute address on it. Do your words come freely and your sentences flow out rhythmically? Practise _on the same topic_ until they do. 4. Select some subject with which you are familiar and test your fluency by speaking extemporaneously. 5. Take one of the sentiments given below and, following the advice given on pages 118-119, construct a short speech beginning with the last word in the sentence. Machinery has created a new economic world. The Socialist Party is a strenuous worker for peace. He was a crushed and broken man when he left prison. War must ultimately give way to world-wide arbitration. The labor unions demand a more equal distribution of the wealth that labor creates. 6. Put the sentiments of Mr. Bryan's "Prince of Peace," on page 448, into your own words. Honestly criticise your own effort. 7. Take any of the following quotations and make a five-minute speech on it without pausing to prepare. The first efforts may be very lame, but if you want speed on a typewriter, a record for a hundred-yard dash, or facility in speaking, you must practise, _practise_, _PRACTISE_. There lives more faith in honest doubt, --TENNYSON, _In Memoriam_. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, --TENNYSON, _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_. 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view --CAMPBELL, _Pleasures of Hope_. His best companions, innocence and health, --GOLDSMITH, _The Deserted Village_. Beware of desperate steps! The darkest day, --COWPER, _Needless Alarm_. My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. --PAINE, _Rights of Man_. Trade it may help, society extend, --POPE, _Moral Essays_.[5] O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! --SHAKESPEARE, _Othello_. It matters not how strait the gate, --HENLEY, _Invictus_. The world is so full of a number of things, --STEVENSON, _A Child's Garden of Verses_. If your morals are dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. --STEVENSON, _Essays_. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. --EMERSON, _Essays_. 8. Make a two-minute speech on any of the following general subjects, but you will find that your ideas will come more readily if you narrow your subject by taking some specific phase of it. For instance, instead of trying to speak on "Law" in general, take the proposition, "The Poor Man Cannot Afford to Prosecute;" or instead of dwelling on "Leisure," show how modern speed is creating more leisure. In this way you may expand this subject list indefinitely. _GENERAL THEMES_ Law. [Footnote 4: See chapter on "Increasing the Vocabulary."] [Footnote 5: Money.] |