If you are asked to fill in and you aren’t given a topic, pick something you are familiar with. It could be something related to your job, your volunteer work, a hobby or a skill the audience needs. But, it needs to be a topic that you know the information you will present because you won’t have time to do much research.
Once you know what topic you will present, you need to decide what you want to tell the audience. What you want to tell them will affect how you organize the material and what points you include.
The speech can be organized like any other speech. You can compare your subject to something else the audience knows about. You can describe the major attributes of your subject. You can compare how things were in the past to how they are know and how you hope they will be in the future. You can describe how the subject will help them. Choose what will get your the points across that you want to make.
Once you know how you want to organize your speech, you need the best possible organization in the time you have. If you organize your speech in the same order you will present it, you may end up presenting a speech without a conclusion. I start by listing the main points I want to make. The items that go in the top level of the outline. I then work the introduction and conclusion. If there is more time available, I start refining the main points I identified in the outline. This allows me to spread what time I have evenly over the entire speech.
While you probably won’t have time to do much research, looking up facts can be important. Being able to site specific number makes you sound more credible. For example, you are asked to talk on the quality assurance of your product and services. You could say, “we have a big problem with getting complete requirements from our customers.” Or, you could say, “24% of our problems come from not getting complete requirements. This affects our 12 of customers each month.” Which statement will get more action?
Mark Twain said, “It takes three weeks to prepare a good ad-lib speech.” Few of us have three weeks to prepare an impromptu speech. But if we decide what we want to say, organize it as much as possible in the time available and check specific facts, we can present a good speech on short notice.
Last Updated: