Use An iPad To Boost Your Speaking Skills
For bicycle this bicycle post bicycle, I’ll bicycle take bicycle a bicycle different bicycle approach bicycle.
Exactly two years ago, I learned about the “bicycle” speaking drill at my school’s debate camp — adding the word bicycle in between each word of a script to improve enunciation.
Before high school, I was a shy kid — I was a bad public speaker, I was incredibly nervous when speaking in front of my class, and I was terrible at talking to girls I had a crush on.
Through debate, I’ve been able to somewhat solve the first two.
This is how I did it, and how anyone with an iPad can too — I’ll cover a couple techniques to become a better speaker and an interesting new app that’ll help you apply these strategies.
Speech Drills
This is more of a general speaking strategy rather than a confidence strategy — practicing speech drills on a regular basis can help you become a better speaker.
For a list of helpful speaking drills (some of which I use for debate), you can check out this post from the debate guru. My personal favorites are the insert word drill, reading backwards, and reading with an accent.
There are a few ways you can go about practicing these speech drills. Here are two that I’d recommend:
Choice 1: Whenever you have some kind of script (any piece of text works), practice your favorite drill. Whether it’s a news article, email, or even a long text message, you can complete a drill or two whenever you have some extra time available.
Choice 2: Build a consistent speech drill habit. This choice is intended for people who want to take speaking seriously — this could mean establishing a speech drill as part of your morning routine, completing one speech drill after you head home from school/work, or doing a speech drill with the last paragraph of each chapter of a book.
Impromptu Speech
Delivering an impromptu or extemporaneous speech builds confidence — it teaches you how to talk with minimal stuttering/filler words, even in “high-pressure” situations.
Here are a few different styles of impromptu speeches you can practice:
Choice 1: Take two minutes to prepare a five minute speech on a random topic. Spend those two minutes thinking about what to say and how to say it (you can create a brief outline of your speech using an iPad and an Apple Pencil). To choose a topic, you can check out this impromptu topic generator.
Choice 2: Take ten minutes to prepare a three minute speech on a random topic. Seems easy, right? The difference is that you’ll be answering a question, and you’ll have to do research to back up your response. You can use Split View on your iPad to research in a browser and take notes in a note-taking app. To generate questions, go here.
Choice 3: Connect two random topics in a five minute speech (with three minutes of prep time). Like with Choice 1, you can outline your speech on your iPad. To choose topics, go to this speech topic generator. Generate three topic ideas, and pick any combination of two of them for your speech.
For all three, recording a video of your speech can help you identify areas of strength and areas of improvement.
Mike
As I looked for ways I could use my iPad to improve my public speaking skills, I came across Mike.
Mike helps speakers by adding a recording of a videotaped audience. While practicing a speech, Mike plays this recording to help you reduce your anxiety.
There are five pathways Mike currently offers:
- Freestyle — practice anytime
- Bootcamp — prepare for a specific presentation
- Total Transformation — be ready for any presentation
- Interview 101 — prepare for a job interview (or dating)
- Maintenance — keep your skills sharp
With only nine ratings on the App Store (as of the time of writing), I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first downloaded the app.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Mike offers a variety of options for users: you can choose the gender of your audience (likely oriented towards the dating aspect of the app), interest level, and attire (business, casual, or mixed).
To deliver a speech, you can either use your own speech or a speech from Mike’s library. You can also use the optional teleprompter/recording tools if needed.
Using Mike, you can practice speech drills or impromptu speech delivery in a somewhat realistic scenario — I found this a lot more helpful than talking to my iPad.
Best of all, Mike is entirely free (for now, at least).
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading! I hope this post helped out in case you’re shy or lost some social confidence during quarantine like I did.
Thanks!
Adi
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