Friday, July 17, 2020

How to Write a Graduation Speech

How to Write a Graduation Speech Delivering a graduation speech, also referred to as the commencement address, it a significant milestone in every student’s educational and life path. At this point, you have to give thanks to the educational institution that provided you with valuable knowledge and skills, reflect on your personal and professional growth experienced during the course of studies, while at the same time not being trivial and dull. A bit of a challenge, right? Don’t be afraid, we have tips and advice to make the process of writing a great graduation speech interesting and pleasurable. Obviously, it is you who is in the center of the graduation speech, since it is your personal story and personal life path, but our graduation speech ideas may help you with structuring and drafting an interesting, memorable speech, finding the right words and making the whole story unique. Enjoy the ride! What is a Graduation Speech, After All? You are asking the right question! How to make an amazing graduation speech if you don’t even know what it is? We’ll correct the issue very quickly â€" look at our simple explanation for dummies to get better involved with the subject of graduation speech production. A graduation speech is the speech that you are expected to deliver in public, that is, to your family, friends, student population, and administration of the school in which you have been studying for years. Hence, it cannot be perceived as a plain piece of writing, since it has to inspire and motivate people; moreover, it should reveal you as a personality. It should not be a typical story about hardships and overcoming them in the process of education, offering a unique story of a personality instead, and at the same time containing some moral lesson the audience might embrace. Obviously, not all graduation speeches are fantastic; for the majority of people, the rank highest in the list of least memorable life events. This happens because too many graduates include predictable messages about fulfilling their dreams, fighting for their rights and recognition, gratitude to their parents and thought leaders, and struggle against certain forms of injustice. Though these events may be highly significant for one’s life, they have already become quite trivial at the broader scale. Don’t make similar mistakes â€" craft a speech that will remain in the annals of your educational institution for years! Brainstorming is the Clue So how to start a graduation speech that will become a truly impressive, outstanding piece of your personal writing and self-expression? Our advice is â€" brainstorm! At the start of the writing process, you may have too many ideas circling in your head and not letting you concentrate on some vital points. Remember: you cannot include everything in a graduation speech. It is highly advisable to make a short graduation speech, but it nevertheless does not mean that you have to say a few meaningless words. Eloquence is the grandest talent of a public speaker, so brainstorm for ideas first, and then remove everything insignificant to maintain and condense the gist of your personal growth, progress, and reflections in a brief and impressive piece of performance. For effective, fruitful brainstorming, you should: Think of things you can state truthfully without those sugary thanks to your family and supervisors. Be true to yourself â€" only the truth may look sincere enough from the stage to interest and involve the audience. Recollect all great memories you have since the times of the start of your education. Focus on funny but morally enriching experiences â€" the audience loves funny graduation speeches â€" but avoid sarcasm or open humiliation of other people. Think of your future prospects and aspirations. Look for something that will truly reveal your connection with school and the way in which it informed your future career choice; be frank but observant, and you will see the delicate links and associations to speak about. Write down as many ideas as possible without evaluating their significance or propriety for the graduation speech. After the brainstorming is over, you will have time to think them over and prioritize what you have. Structuring a Graduation Speech Any tips for writing a graduation speech include one unavoidable step: composition of structure and outline. A strict outline is a vital component of successful graduation speech writing. As soon as you start writing, you may get confused or deviate from the initially established themes and arguments, which will waste your time and most likely induce you to start anew. Structuring is the key to order, and ordering your thoughts when writing about yourself may be a crucial contribution to quick and easy graduation speech completion. Where to look for effective structures? Search through the list of world-famous people’s commencement speeches, you can find a huge amount of valuable tips and ideas on how to write a graduation speech. Check the graduation speeches of US Presidents, famous United Nations figures, outstanding businesspeople (e.g., Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg) to find unbeatable themes for graduation speeches Start with a strong message and then illustrate how you learned it â€" from your experience and life wisdom obtained from overcoming challenges Make a speech a list of short and memorable thesis statements about your life observations or experiences to make a large number of points So, what should the outline of a graduation speech contain? We’ll reveal no secret if we say: introduction, body, conclusion. As an experienced student, you may be quite well familiarized with this traditional structure of all written assignments by now, but what about the graduation speech? Should it follow the usual essay structure? Not quite. Keep in mind that this is a speech something people will not read but listen; structure your introduction and conclusion as usual, but don’t push too many complex facts, statistics, and elegant long sentences into the body of the speech. Get Reviews to Check the Impression Upon completion of a draft, you may feel tired working on the speech and may haste to deem it complete and ideal, ready for the delivery. We will disappoint you â€" the way towards successful delivery of your speech is only half through! To construct a more objective and comprehensive opinion about your speech, ask your friends, family, or fellow students to listen to it and give feedback. Peer review is the best way to look at the speech from aside and to fine-tune some problematic moments you may fail to notice simply because you have been working on the task for so long. Moreover, rehearsal of the speech in front of a small number of listeners may help you create the mini-scenario of what it will look like on the actual speech delivery day, thus preparing you for the public speaking act better than any mental, abstract preparation can. To Proofread or not to Proofread? That Is the Question Proofreading a speech may sound as nonsense to you, since it is not an essay or research paper than needs to be submitted to the supervisor and will be graded for consistency, correctness of spelling and grammar, and other typos and mistakes. It is an oral piece, so errors should not matter much, right? Moreover, nobody will grade your performance…. These thoughts are too tempting to give yourself time for editing and proofreading the speech â€" but don’t yield to them, it is a trap! Proofreading is required to any piece of writing or speaking, especially for speeches â€" as soon as you start speaking, nothing can be changed or edited. Keep in mind that when you are rehearsing and preparing the speech in the safe surroundings of your room or class, you may be confident that you will deal with some inconsistencies. However, when you start speaking in front of broad public, your tension and stress may let you down, so it is vital for the written speech to be ideal, for you to be able to resort to it at some moments of speaking. If you make too long pauses and find it hard to locate the idea you were voicing on paper, the speech may fail. Hence, we strongly recommend thorough proofreading and fine-tuning of the speech text so that you were 100% confident in it before starting the actual speech. Why Practice before Delivering the Speech? Let’s face the truth â€" even a superbly written graduation speech may succeed only if it is properly delivered, which is done personally by you, standing in front of a huge number of people. Some of them will listen with genuine interest; for others it will be nothing but a formality; regardless of the intentions and mood of the public, you have to be able to speak confidently and with charm, which cannot be done if you do not prepare for the public address. After all, the impression that your speech will produce is all about the power of storytelling, so let yourself go in the rehearsals, get comfortable with your text, and you will feel much better during the actual speech. Here are some benefits of rehearsal: You can apply the skill of public speaking before the actual speaking to see what works for you best and to learn from those experiences in a safe environment You can try several versions of the speech before choosing the one you feel is the most powerful, or cut the irrelevant parts of a long speech to make it concise You can record the speech and then listen to it for in-depth self-analysis and further fine-tuning of the speech to achieve excellence and total satisfaction When rehearsing your speech, don’t forget to leave enough time for yourself; experimentation with the tone and face expression, revision of the speech text, and testing of the new variants may be lengthier than you might initially suppose. The “Wow” Day: Speech Delivery At this point, you have already become the guru of graduation speech writing, but here is the problem: while you have managed to write and submit previous assignments without the need to deliver them, this is the assignment that cannot be silently handed in to your supervisor! You have to deliver it on your own in public, and the way in which you will do this will determine its effect even more than its content. How to deliver a graduation speech with dignity and ease so that the audience indeed heard the message and liked it? How to feel confident and relaxed when speaking to such a large number of listeners? No doubt, the actual speech delivery may be very stressful, and even the best masterpiece, if delivered improperly, may not be heard. Here are some pieces of advice from our experts of public speaking and oratory art to follow: Before starting to speak about yourself, give credit to the previous speaker to show you do not care only about your own speech but listen to others as well Introduce yourself by name â€" there is a high likelihood of someone in the audience not knowing you personally Include some motivational message or quote from some outstanding person’s public speeches to show your credo; it is the easiest and most expressive way of introducing you as a personality and outlining your life values Tell an involving story about you that nevertheless may touch the strings of hearts of many people and is universally relevant Call to action; a speech without a call may vanish in oblivion in a couple of minutes Make connections â€" between quotes and your experiences, between the opening message and lessons learned in your conclusion Speak confidently and look at different people without focusing on one figure Smile (not to be confused with a nervous grim) At the end of the speech, thank the listeners for their attention. A final piece of advice for those still not knowing why on earth they have to withstand the stress of speaking about themselves in public: this is you, after all, and the event is highly meaningful for you and your family above everything. Keep this in your heart and mind when delivering the speech, speak to your dearest ones without paying attention to the crowd, and this will be definitely a sincere and warm graduation speech about your accomplishments and your pathway. Even if it is not grand and is not included in the handbooks for learning to write awesome graduation speeches â€" it will be you in the words and lines of the speech, which is all that matters.