Campaign speech

Campaign speech

• 1.
  How to make mycampaign speech perfect? By: Angelo P. Ang
• 2.
  Structuring your Campaign Speech –Tailor your message to your audience in a specific ways. – Before you start writing, think about the audience you are addressing.[5] Are you addressing the entire student body? Just one grade? A classroom? – if you’re talking to one classroom, don’t only talk to the classroom about a general problem the school has. Talk to the classroom about how that general problem affects them and how you can change it. – For example, don’t say: “The breaks in between homeroom and first period aren’t long enough.” Say: “Everybody in homeroom has gotten at least one demerit for being late to first period. We can’t get all the way from North Campus to South Campus in time. Elect me as homeroom representative, and I won’t let the administration forget it.”
• 3.
  Structuring your Campaign Speech –Outline your speech. All writing has a beginning, middle and end. Outlining your thoughts first will help you stay on track as you write the speech.[6] – The beginning needs to catch people’s attention and raise the questions you’re going to answer. The middle needs to provide the answers, and the end connects the answers back to the questions. In very simple terms: You tell them what you’re going to tell them. Then, you tell them. Then you tell them what you told them.[7]
• 4.
  Structuring your Campaign Speech –Make your point quickly. Open your campaign speech with your theme, or main idea. You don’t stand anything to gain by beating around the bush, because people naturally want to pay attention to themselves. You have to convince them to listen to you. For example: – Don’t say: “My name is Joe Blow, and I’m running for City Council. I’m a member of…” – Instead, get right to it. Say: “Not a single person in this city thinks the parking situation on Main St. is adequate. No one.” – There's a lot of ways to get this done. You can use a story, a challenge, a joke, or just vividly describe a problem. You just need to get the audience's attention quickly. Earn their attention, don't expect it to come to you.
• 5.
  Structuring your Campaign Speech –Support your theme. Once you’ve got their attention, don’t let go. The middle of your speech needs to explain the issues you raised in the introduction and convince people that you can do something about them, but you need to vary the way you tackle the issues.[9] – You want to have a good mix of facts, feelings, and action. If you only talk facts, your audience will get bored. Only talk feelings, and you’ll wear them out. Only talk action, and it invites disbelief, because you haven’t offered enough factual and emotional support for your argument
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  Structuring your Campaign Speech –Raise the stakes at the end. The conclusion is just as important as the introduction. It's the last chance you have to leave an impression, so make sure they remember you by raising the stakes. – To continue with the parking example, don’t end your speech talking about the width and number of parking spaces on Main St. Make it bigger than that—something that makes them feel weaker for not supporting you and stronger for supporting you. – “This isn’t just about parking spaces. The parking situation is just a symptom of everything that’s wrong with the Council in this city. We’ve asked. We’ve begged. We’ve done all we could. Now we have to send a message that they can’t just ignore us.” With this kind of appeal, you put the listener in a position where they are either a person who votes for you or a person who lets themselves be ignored. Most people will take the first choice.
• 7.
  How am Igoing to deliver my Speech? – Speak slowly. Remember the audience is hearing the speech and not reading it. When you write a campaign speech, it's very important to keep in mind that how you write for listeners is going to be much different from how you would write for readers.[1] – A lot of people get nervous when they give a speech, and when people get nervous they talk fast. But fast talkers seem untrustworthy. So if you get nervous, space out your words (literally, put five spaces in between each word on the page) to keep your speech measured.
• 8.
  How am Igoing to deliver my Speech? – Talk to the audience like you're having a conversation. Even though you're not actually having a conversation with someone, it should sound like you are. Don't worry about eliminating contractions, splitting infinitives, or leaving modifiers dangling.[2][3] – Don't go overboard with informality. You're asking to lead your peers, so they need to trust you can do that. Most people can't lead well, so to convince them you can lead well, your speech should also reflect that you're more capable than an average person. You need to strike a balance. Speak at a level just above the level of a typical conversation.
• 9.
  How am Igoing to deliver my Speech? – Keep your words simple and direct. Student audiences have especially short attention spans and limited vocabularies. As a good rule of thumb, keep all of your sentences at fifteen words or less. – Instead of: "We need to address the way we schedule our lunch breaks in a reasonable but fair way, because the way we do it now isn't fair to anyone." – Try: "We have people eating lunch at 10:30 am. They're still serving breakfast at Burger King at 10:30! It doesn't make sense! By the time 2:00 rolls around, the early lunch kids are starving. There is a better way. We all know it."
• 10.
  How am Igoing to deliver my Speech? – Read it aloud to see how it sounds. People may only hear your speech once. Read your speech aloud exactly as you want it to sound when you’re giving it. You’ll probably find words and phrases that sound clunky to the ear or trip up your tongue. Rephrase them.[4] – For even more focused practice, try speaking in front of a mirror or in front of a camera.