Public Speaking 911 Blog

Aside from the fact that most people don’t like to be read to, there are several problems you must contend with when reading to your audience:

1. Lack of eye contact. The biggest problem of reading to an audience is eye contact. Maintaining good eye contact with your audience should be the first rule of effective public speaking. The more you can look at your audience, catch their eye and maintain that relationship, the stronger your presentation will be. Even looking down at a page or book for even a couple minutes is enough time for your audience to lose that connection with you. And when you’ve lost your connection to the audience, you’ve lost your momentum.
2. Your voice drops. When you look down to read, your voice is no longer projecting out to the audience but, rather, down to the page. The problem with that is, of course, that the page doesn’t need to hear what you’re saying. Your audience, on the other hand, does need to hear you. And, by projecting your voice downward, you lose at least half of the force of your diaphragm.

These are certainly good reasons not to read your speech. But, there are times during your public speaking life when you may find it necessary to read a passage from a book, or other printed material. Are there any ways to help not break communication with the audience during those times?

Luckily, there are

One way to lesson the disruption of reading a passage to your audience is hold up the book or written material to just below face level. That way you can read it and still maintain the force of your diaphragm and your eye contact over the top of the book or page.

Practice reading the passage beforehand with inflection and emotion. Have you ever seen a librarian holding children in rapt attention by reading a storybook to them? If they read in a boring monotone, the kids would be restless and bored. But, by reading books with varied inflections and emotion, they’re able to keep the children’s attention. Your audience is like. If you make the read passage interesting, you can help maintain that connection with them.

Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of thinking that because you are going to read some of your presentation, it reduces your preparations. If anything, you should prepare more.