Helpful Hints from Successful Speakers
- Prepare yourself emotionally for class.
- Grab students' attention with your opening.
- Announce the objectives for each class period.
- Think about and watch your audience during the lecture.
- Vary your delivery to keep students' attention.
- Convey your own enthusiasm for the material.
- Make your organization explicit.
- Be conversational.
- Maintain eye contact with the audience.
- Use movement and facial expressions to help emphasize main points.
- Keep track of time.
- Pause frequently to give students time to take notes.
- Breathe normally.
- Give students a road map to follow (use transitions, previews and reviews).
- Avoid telling students everything you know.
- Repeat key ideas frequently.
- Use different words to make the same point.
- Move from the simple to the complex.
- Limit the number of main points to three or four.
- Demonstrate a complex concept-don't just describe it.
- Conclude forcefully.
- Make notes to yourself after the lecture on what went well and what did not.
- Record and/or videotape yourself lecturing.
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