There will be occasions when you have to give a speech with little or no time to prepare. Whether it is for your job in class are part of a test like TOEFL or IELTS, we call this impromptu speaking. Some people are naturally good at talking without preparation. When you watch these kinds of people, you wonder how ideas appear so easily without planning what to say. If you are this type of person, then lucky you. Native English speakers often say that for people like you, where it's just come to you naturally. However, if you are like most people, you may get stage fright and will most likely experience the following situations. You freeze up and words cannot come out of your mouth, you get tongue tied essentially as you talk, you stutter or you hesitate a lot. You say or a lot you ramble, which means that you keep talking with no point or you keep repeating yourself. If you have these experiences, don't worry, it's embarrassing, but your response is completely normal. A lot of people do not enjoy speaking impromptu for the same reasons as you yet. The scale of speaking impromptu is one that can be developed through practicing specific strategies, okay? You will be learning strategies to build a structured response. Though a structured response is more relevant in a test taking situation, as you practice the strategies and feel more comfortable transitioning into free form speaking will be easier. The objectives were the speaking lesson are for you to one answer the question directly to provide organization to your answer. Three expand your answer with more details. Four can talk continuously for 1.5 minutes. In the first part of this lesson, we will focus on the first two objectives as they are somewhat tied together. The first objective is a reminder to answer the question directly. Let's take the question what is your favorite holiday? A person who is direct would answer by saying that his favorite holiday is Thanksgiving because of reason 1, 2 and 3. A person who doesn't answer the question directly may say that he likes Thanksgiving but then starts to give us reasons why he doesn't like Christmas or New Year's. The tip is to stick to the main point. Another example is with this question, do you prefer to watch a movie in the theater or at home? A direct answer would be for example choosing the theater and giving all reasons as to why the theater is great. If a person chooses a theater and then tells us why watching movies at home is a bad idea. He isn't really answering the question directly. That is why the second objective provide organization to your answer will be useful. It helps give you a framework for your answer when you receive a question. It's very helpful to decide what kind of answer structure to use. For simplicity sake questions will be put into two categories, list or time order. Organization Style- List. Look at your topic and think of a list of main points that you want to talk about with an explanation and details about each one. Your main points might be reasons, parts of something, examples or types of things. Some example questions in this category are 1, why do people eat fast food? 2, what are the different types of visas for foreigners? Or 3, what are the parts of the brain? When you are trying to organize your answer, you can follow the following chart. First tell us the main idea, then explain what the first point is with supporting details, then do the same for point number 2 and 3. Finally, if you have enough time summarize the main idea, let's look at a sample question and see how it fits in the chart. The question is why do people eat fast food? The main idea could be people eat fast food for many reasons. Then we start with point number one. The first reason is that it is cheap and then explain this point deeper by talking about how cheap it is. The second point is that it is convenient and then you can explain all the different ways that it is convenient. Maybe you can give examples. Finally, the third reason is that it is fast and then you can explain this point with details. Maybe talk about how quickly the food is prepared at fast food restaurants. Finally, at the end, you can summarize by saying that many people consume fast food since it is cheap, convenient and fast. Organization Style- Time Order. If you're telling about an experience, about a topic in history or about how something started or ended, you can use the time order organization style. You could tell the listeners what happened first, next and last or what happened in the past. What is happening now and what might happen in the future? Some example questions in this category are 1, tell us about the last time you cooked something. 2, how is New Year's celebrated in your country? 3, what caused the First World War. When you are trying to organize your answer for a time order question, you can follow the following chart. As the chart suggests, you start by telling us the main idea. After, you will explain points in order and use time words like first, next, after that and finally as transition words. If there is time at the end, you can give a final comment to wrap up your speech. Let's look at a sample question and see how it fits in the chart. How is New Year's celebrated in your country? The main idea could be something like in the United States, New Year's is a very big holiday. Then the speaker can talk about what happens during New Year's in a sequence like first. The celebration starts the night before on New Year's Eve and then he can tell everything in order. Using the time transition words. If you start to go out of order, it becomes very confusing, but if you happen to forget something, it's useful to say an expression. Like one thing that I forgot to mention is that between A and BC. Happens, an expression like that can help the listener follow better.
