Kirk Mahoney . com

Many visitors to this website are interested in public speaking.

After all, human communication tends to be more oral than written.

And this made me wonder: What are three recommendations that I would make to anyone who wants to improve his or her speaking skills?

The answer? 1. Learn more! 2. Talk to yourself! 3. Talk to others!

1. Learn more!

“Learn more to earn more.” is a popular expression in America today. Given that your speaking skills often affect your earning ability, I recommend that you learn more in these three ways: (a) get public-speaking instruction; (b) improve your voice quality; and, (c) learn a new word every day.

I recommend that you get public-speaking instruction to learn the basics. Three sources include instructional products, website videos, and adult-education courses. Amazon and other retailers have lots of books and DVDs about public speaking. You can find thousands of free, very good videos about public speaking at websites such as YouTube; just search for “public speaking”. And adult-education programs at community colleges and proprietary schools such as Learning Annex offer public-speaking courses for those who prefer the classroom experience.

I recommend that you improve your voice quality to make you a speaker who is more comfortable with his or her own voice and to be understood by a wider audience. Several years ago I bought an audio-tape set about voice quality from a publisher of self-improvement products, and I got a lot out of it. Today there are hundreds of free videos about improving your voice at YouTube and other video-clips websites. Search for “improve your voice” (without the quotation marks) to find them. And you can use the same search phrase at Amazon and other retailers to find books about this topic.

I recommend that you learn a new word every day to make you a speaker with greater comfort with words and therefore a more relaxed speaker. Practiced daily, this simple act means that you will have expanded your vocabulary by 365 words in one year. The average size of a U.S. high-school student’s vocabulary dropped from 25,000 words in 1950 to only 10,000 words in 2000. So you can set yourself apart from the crowd, while improving your comfort level with words and therefore with your speaking, by expanding your vocabulary by one word each day. Anyone with Web access can easily find websites that display a word a day. One example is Dictionary.com, which even sends its “Word of the Day” free to iPhones. And there are sites where you can subscribe to get a new word each day by email; Oxford English Dictionary is one example. I also recommend books such as Word Nerd, which is filled with some 18,000 words, for a do-it-yourself approach to learning a new word each day.

2. Talk to yourself!

Most people believe that those who talk to themselves are crazy, but talking to yourself can improve your speaking skills.

I recommend making videos of yourself speaking into a camera and then viewing them to identify areas for improvement. You can make videos with many tools now. A webcam is a very inexpensive way to record yourself speaking. You can usually find at least one video-recording mode on a digital camera. And many dedicated video cameras are relatively inexpensive now. Once you have shot a video of yourself talking into a camera, you can save the videos to your computer or DVDs for playback. When you watch yourself on video, look and listen for annoying mannerisms.

Speaking of mannerisms, I recommend that you monitor your speech for “uhs” and “ums”. These meaningless interjections can drive listeners crazy. I do not claim to be perfect at this. But speakers who avoid them are a delight to hear. One trick that you can use to cut the number of annoying interjections is to keep a tally of them and then make an anonymous contribution to your least-favorite political cause based on the tally. You should soon find your speech nearly or completely “uh”- and “um”-free.

And I recommend that you talk to yourself while learning a foreign language. Not only will you have to expand your vocabulary as you learn the new language, but you will also have to focus on how you pronounce the new language’s words. I had to study German for two years in college, and my German professors often complimented me on my pronunciation of German words. Why did I get noticed? Unlike many of my classmates, I talked to myself. That is, I went daily to the language lab, put on headphones, listened to German words, phrases, and sentences, spoke into the microphone attached to the headphones, and compared how I sounded to the native speakers in the German audio programs. It truly was that simple. When, many years later, I took several adult-education courses about Spanish, I did not have access to a language lab. So I listened to Spanish tapes at home and then practiced speaking Spanish to myself in the shower! As with my German courses in college, I got noticed for my excellent pronunciation skills in my Spanish classes. By honing your pronunciation skills in a foreign language, you will naturally improve your English pronunciation skills. And this will make you a better speaker.

3. Talk to others!

Ultimately, talking is useless without listeners. So you have to find opportunities to speak to small and large groups of people, if you want to improve your speaking skills.

I recommend that you first pursue public speaking in a volunteer organization. The group of listeners can be very small, so it will feel like having a conversation with friends, which you already know how to do. As your comfort level rises, you can speak to larger audiences within the organization and eventually at public events hosted by the organization.

I recommend that you next pursue public speaking through a speaking club such as one associated with Toastmasters International. Toastmasters is a tried-and-true means to becoming an excellent public speaker. Because each Toastmasters club has members at various skill levels, you have the safety of knowing that others have been where you are and want you to improve.

Finally, for what I found to be the ultimate challenge, I recommend that you seek a job that requires you to speak regularly. I did this, and it changed my life. When I was in graduate school, I knew that I would have to get over my shyness and improve my speaking skills in order to pass my dissertation defense, which is a presentation and oral examination in front of several professors as well as anyone else who wants to observe the carnage. I also was looking for an extra source of income toward the end of graduate school. The perfect opportunity arose when a friend who taught at a community college told me about a one-semester night course for which the college needed an adjunct instructor. I first had to prepare a ten-minute presentation for my interview with three instructors at the college. That was nerve-wracking in and of itself, and I spent hours organizing my mini-lesson on a topic of my choosing. My preparation paid off because my ten-minute presentation was so well received that I got offered the job. I initially had an “Oh, no!” reaction at the news that the community college wanted to hire me. But I remembered my bigger goal — to earn my Ph.D. — so I accepted the job offer. Terrified that the students would see me as a phony, I prepared like crazy for the start of the course. When I walked into the classroom that first evening and saw all those students waiting for me, I was super-nervous. And I am sure that my nervousness was obvious to every student. But I survived the first night, and I had to keep going back until the semester ended. So my nervousness eventually went away, I came out of my shell, I became very comfortable with speaking in public, and my eventual oral exam in defense of my dissertation was a success. Even though I do not now work in the field of my Ph.D., what I learned to get that Ph.D. has been priceless. And one of the most priceless lessons was learning how to speak in public.