While regular practice combined with quality feedback is undoubtedly the best way to improve your speaking skills, it can also be very valuable to watch and learn from other speakers.
By seeing what other people do well (and not so well!) you are able to put yourself in the position of an audience member and learn lessons you can apply to your own speaking. All without even having to get up and speak yourself!
There are some great speeches available to watch online. You can find numerous famous speeches by leaders and politicians via Google, but also check out TED for hundreds of relatively short speeches (5 – 20 minutes) on a wide range of interesting topics.
At Toastmasters, you will get the opportunity to see lots of other people speak and at varying levels of experience, from beginners starting out with their “ice breaker” speech, to more experienced members delivering advanced speeches.
As you become more experienced, you will get the opportunity to formally evaluate someone else’s speech, thus honing your abilities to identify the factors which go to make a great speech.
