Practice Speech: Amaze and Astound Your Favorite Animal
Level: Awareness, Novice, Intermediate
Time Limit: 60 seconds
Target Audience: Deliver these heart warming quotes about animals to an animal; either a cat, dog, bird or fish—you can even choose an animal at the zoo should you be inspired.
Instructions: Select your favorite five quotes from the great animal quotes listed after these instructions. Implement your best practice techniques. Establish a deliberate practice using Duckworth’s steps.
1. Determine your stretch goal. For each quote, apply one suggestion from each list.
Delivery Tips & Techniques
Anxiety Reducing Strategies
2. Focus 100%—no outside interruptions!
3. Use feedback! Were you aware of attention from your audience? Record yourself and ask for feedback from someone you trust.
4. Reflect and refine!
Purpose: Establish a deliberate practice. Implement anxiety-reducing strategies with a non-threatening audience. Explore the array of available options to make your words interesting and compelling. Get comfortable standing in front of an audience who you know won’t judge you! As you approach this speech, be aware of your nerves and fear, then remember that your audience is an animal. This should relieve your fear and help you deliver your speech boldly, with emotion, incorporating the strategies above. Always consider your audience.
Skills to Practice: Establish a deliberate practice. Project your voice, add emotion, inflection and energy. Relax. . . deliver a reading in a non-threatening environment.
Sample Animal Quotes
“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.” — George Eliot
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” — Anatole France
“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.” ― James Herriot
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” — Alice Walker
“Happiness is a warm puppy.” — Charles M. Schulz
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.” — Martin Buber
“Man is the cruelest animal.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“Meow” means “woof” in cat.” — George Carlin
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.” — Mark Twain
“How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.” — Frances Hodgson Burnett
“Clearly, animals know more than we think, and think a great deal more than we know.” — Irene M. Pepperberg
“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” — Josh Billings
“If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.” — Woodrow Wilson
“Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.” — Gregory Maguire
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” — Winston S. Churchill
“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” — Mark Twain
References
Anais Nin. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. Retrieved March 14, 2017, from AZQuotes.com Web site: http:// www.azquotes.com/quote/214868
Apology. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2017, from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/apologies
Ayres, J. (2009). Coping with public speaking anxiety: The power of positive thinking. Communication Education, 37: 4, 289-296.
Ayres, J. & Hopf, T.S. (2009). Visualization: A means of reducing speech anxiety. Communication Education, 34: 4, 318-323.
Benson, H. (2006) Stress Control: Techniques for preventing and easing stress, Harvard Health Publications.
Cuddy, A. (2012, June) Amy Cuddy: Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are [Video le]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are
Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. Simon and Schuster, 2016.
Duckworth A. L., Peterson C., Matthews M. D., Kelly D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 1087—1101
Duckworth, A. L., Kirby, T. A., Tsukayama, E., Berstein, H., & Ericsson, K. A. (2011). Deliberate practice spells success why grittier competitors triumph at the national spelling bee. Social psychological and personality science, 2(2), 174—181.
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological review, 100(3), 363.
Ericsson K. A. (2009). Enhancing the development of professional performance: Implications from the study of deliberate practice. In Ericsson K. A. (Ed.), The development of professional expertise: Toward measurement of expert performance and design of optimal learning environments (pp. 405—431). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hillary Clinton. (n.d.) BrainyQuotes.com. Retrieved March 13, 2017. Web site https://www.brainyquote.com/search_results.html?q=Hillary+Clinton+public+speaking
James C Humes. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. Retrieved March 14, 2017, from AZQuotes.com Web site: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1496850
Lady Bird Johnson. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. Retrieved March 14, 2017, from AZQuotes.com Web site: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/521347
Menzel, K. E. and Carrell, L. J. 1994. The relationship between preparation and performance in public speaking. Communication Education, 43: 17—26.
O’Callaghan, J. (2014, May 30). You are what you DRESS: Clothing has a significant effect on self-esteem and confidence, claims expert. Retrieved April 14, 2017, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2644076/You-DRESS-Clothing-significant-effect-self-esteem-confidence-claims-expert.html
O’Hair, D., Stewart, R. and Rubenstein, H. 2001. A speaker’s guidebook, Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Pine, K. J. (2014). Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of Fashion.doi:B00KBTB3NS
Scott Adams. (n.d.) BrainyQuotes.com. Retrieved March 13, 2017. Web site https://www.brainyquote.com/search_results.html?q=scott+adams+public+speaking
Smith, T. E. & Frymier, A. B. (2007). Get ‘Real’: Does Practicing Speeches Before an Audience Improve Performance? Published online: 03 Feb 2007 Journal Communication Quarterly, Vol. 54, 2006, 1
Van Gompel, R., Fischer, M. Murray, W. & Hill, R. (2007). Eye movements: a window on mind and brain. Elsevier, New York, NY.
Verderber, R. F. and Verderber, K. S. 2002. Communicate!, 10th ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.