FutureLawyer

How long does it take usually to read, at a reasonable pace, a speech/presentation? I need to read a speech in front of my class soon but I'm wondering if it will take too long. It's 8 pages single spaced Times New Roman Font, but with a lot of paragraph breaks. If you get rid of all the paragraph breaks it's about 4-5 pages.

Will I be able to read this outloud in under or around 15-20 minutes? There is a strict time limit that I need to read it outloud in so I was wondering if I need to shorten it even more, though I shortened it from the original 13 pages to this, and it's a heck of a lot of information [reinterpretation of US history going through major events] and so I can't condense it any more unless just be eliminating redundant words.

Thanks

bts7390

You should just practice the speech and time yourself.

scuba723

Is it a speech (where the only help you have is the pre-written essay) or a presentation (in which you can have a powerpoint slideshow, etc.)?

Either way, do not, do not, do not, DO NOT read the entire paper word-for-word. Unless you are Nicholas Sparks and you're doing a public reading of your most recent best-seller, no one wants to hear anyone read that much out loud for that length of time.

Granted, I'm a history nerd, but the topic sounds very interesting, and to do it justice, you should know the material well enough that you don't read every line of your paper. 15 to 20 minutes is not a terribly long time to cover centuries of events, but it's completely doable. The influence and central causes of the Cold War is more important than knowing every politician and policy involved; if pressed for time, "containment" as the US Foreign Policy post-WWII could easily suffice for explaining every plan put into action (Truman, Marshall, etc.).

As bts said, practice until you know every aspect of the speech, every possible question that could be asked, until your dreams are filled with William Jennings Bryan screeching about a cross of gold.

Make it exciting. Your classmates and your teacher will appreciate that.

FutureLawyer

Haha alright thanks, I'll try to have it be a bit more impromptu but the requirment is that it be between 15 and 20 minutes, the speech. It's partly a presentation but she says the main focus should be that it should be a "Lecture", and after the lecture we have a seperate thing where its more of an activity for 10 min, but what I'm worried about is the time limit for the lecture.

I'm usually very bad at speaking impromptu and often make sometimes politically incorrect speaking errors during such. I'll try to shorten the speech I guess to main talking points, although I can't do it like how some peopel do where they just look at a notecard and begin babbling lol.

jcll2002

make sure to emphasize points otherwise it will just be one huge set of words that drift into the oblivion of the boredom of the teenage mind

thebeef

I like to use 150 wpm as an average rate of speaking for a presentation.

FutureLawyer

^ Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

So that means 3000 words? Darn, I need to cut it down 1900 words...bleh.