Watch this video guide to reading from a script whilst presenting and understand how you can present yourself better and allow your audience to understand more.
Summary of tips:
- Hold the paper up
- Hold it slightly to the side
- Look up
- Memorise the first few words
- Bring the words straight to your audience
Transcript
A tip if you’re reading something out loud – hold the paper up.
If you don’t this is what can happen: [muffled] I go fishing up in Maine every summer, personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream but I find that for some strange reason fish prefer worms.
It’s actually very hard to hear me and you can’t see my face so I’m not engaging with you very much. If I hold the paper up and slightly to the side, you can see my face and I don’t have to bend my neck, press against the larynx where my voice is being produced and I can speak out loudly and clearly.
[Clearer] I go fishing up in Maine every summer, personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream but I find that for some strange reason fish prefer worms.
Now, can you see, not only am I looking up most of the time, I’m actually looking at the beginning of the phrase, I’m memorising the first word or so and I’m bringing it straight out to you.
Otherwise, what you might get is this: I go fishing up in Maine every summer, personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream but I find that for some strange reason fish prefer worms.
It’s not so engaging is it? Let me read you the whole thing – this is a favourite extract of mine, it’s from Dale Carnegie “How to win friends and influence people”
I go fishing up in Maine every summer, personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream but I find that for some strange reason fish prefer worms. So when I go fishing, I don’t think about what I want. It think about what they want. I don’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangle a worm or a grasshopper in front of the fish and said: “Wouldn’t you like to have that?”