How to Improve Speech Skills: 3 Key Speaking Skills

You begin to develop speaking skills in the earliest phases of language development and acquisition. As you get older and refine your speaking skills, you can amass a wider vocabulary to improve your diction, gain a sense of what makes a story or speech engaging, and attain a better understanding of how to hold an audience’s attention.

Public speaking skills can prove useful in terms of normal conversation as well. The more eloquent, clear, and confident you are, the more adept at both oration and conversation you’ll be.

To speak well, you need to cultivate a certain set of traits and talents. Here are just a few of the key communication skills you should work on to become a better speaker:

1. 1. Clarity: For someone to appreciate what you have to say, they have to comprehend what you mean in the first place. Speech clarity is what allows people to understand precisely what you mean. This involves choosing the right words to convey your intended meaning with simplicity but also thoroughness. You can improve your own sense of clarity by studying other speakers with clear and concise oratory abilities.
2. 2. Confidence: One of the most common phobias, the fear of public speaking takes a lot of practice and confidence to overcome. Start by practicing in front of a mirror or with friends and family before stepping out in front of a crowd. Still, the only way to gain this sort of faith in yourself is to step outside of your comfort zone. You’ll become a more confident public speaker by speaking in public often. As you gain greater self-assurance, you’ll have a much easier time keeping audiences captivated.
3. 3. Eloquence: You’ll need to know your way around the finer points of your language to become the best speaker possible. Clever turns of phrase, a robust vocabulary, and persuasive argumentation are just a few pillars of eloquence and rhetoric.

Improving your ability to speak requires refinement on a host of different metrics. These public speaking tips will help you engage your listeners as much as possible:

1. 1. Maintain a sense of calm. To speak well, you need to feel stable and in control of yourself. If you let your nerves get the best of you, they can throw off your ability to speak with the cogency you could otherwise muster. Take deep breaths before beginning a speech to calm yourself or consider doing a brief mindfulness meditation. Performing breathing exercises will help expand your lung capacity and allow you to speak for longer stretches of time.
2. 2. Practice ahead of time. Rehearse the specific speech you plan to give a multitude of times before giving it. You can also practice saying tongue twisters to refine your articulation and ability to say many complex words and sounds in a row. Read books aloud to yourself or to family members is another way to improve your speaking skills.
3. 3. Prepare what you plan to say. Even the greatest orators in history have relied on notes or full transcripts of what they plan to say while speaking. Write out your speech in full and read through it over and over. See if you can break it down into an outline and still capture all your main points and turns of phrase. If possible, use a visual aid, such as a teleprompter or cue cards, as you address the crowd.
4. 4. Reduce filler words. It’s common to use filler words like “um,” “uh,” and “like” during everyday conversation, but you should strive to avoid using these in more official settings. Record yourself speaking to learn which filler words you might use often so you can begin weeding them out of your speech. In more serious cases, a course of language therapy can help you reduce your reliance on these placeholders.
5. 5. Talk with a speech therapist. If you struggle with a speech difference or impediment, consider meeting with a speech-language pathologist. Speech therapy can help you overcome a stutter, overreliance on filler words, or other issues. They can also help you with more basic rhetorical skills like varying your intonation and projecting your voice so everyone can hear you.
6. 6. Utilize body language. Engage your audience’s attention through both verbal language and body language. Make eye contact with people in the crowd. Use appropriate facial expressions to anchor emotional points. Gesture with your hands. Pace around the stage.

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