Okay I was planning on starting this by being very charming or intellectual, but
in the end, I decided to just be myself. Myself is Peggy Marcy at Mount San
Antonio College. And this little presentation is about starting
presentations or speeches. Sometimes starting a presentation happens before
the introduction. Okay? Regardless whether it's the
introduction, or the part before the introduction, you want attention getters.
You need to grab the attention of people who are listening and watching. So one
way you can do that is with a joke. Now there are lots of subjects that you
should not joke about. So you might want to joke with you as the subject that is
being put down or at personal expense as we say. So I started this video trying to
make a joke at my own personal expense. Some of you understood it; some of
you did not, perhaps. You can also make a joke about your own experience, and
this combines jokes with storytelling. And storytelling is very popular for drawing
people in and getting them interested.
Another way to start is with amazing facts. Now facts often are very dry so
you need to be careful.
Sometimes if you have
list of three or four facts sometimes at least one or two of them will be
interesting to someone, but you want them to be interesting,
surprising, okay? Something that is is more than just a dry number or statistic.
or fact. So the more surprising the number can be, the statistic, or the fact,
the better it will draw in your listeners. Another option are anecdotes
or story telling. So telling a story is, I think, one of the
skills that is most in-demand right now in public speaking and in life. I think
that we interest people the most when we tell stories. Here are some ways to begin
a story. The story can actually maybe be... it could be historical fact
or it could be fiction, something that's made up, whether its future or historical.
It doesn't have to be true; doesn't have to have really happened.
Although, authenticity is really ...and truth is really important to groups these days.
So if it is something from the past or something you made up that's not
obvious it's made up, you might want to consider telling your audience so that
you can keep your authenticity real with them. And again of course you
can tell your own experience.
Another thing you can do is start off with questions or one question. This is a
way that I often start because I have trouble thinking of ways of getting
people's attention. So if I ask a question that will... maybe it's going to
be answered during the presentation. Or maybe it's an unanswerable question and
even at the end of my presentation I can't answer it. Or maybe it's a question
that gives me more information about my audience.
Regardless, the main ways of
getting attention to present your ... to start your presentation are through
jokes, through facts or statistics, through storytelling, and by asking
questions. Good luck!