The Entertaining Speaker
People like to be entertained and the entertaining speaker offers listeners a pleasant diversion from their demanding lives. This manual offers five projects that will help you develop your skills as an entertaining speaker.

 
1. The Entertaining Speech
Time: 5-7 minutes
Objectives:  •  Entertain the audience through use of humor and/or drama drawn from your personal experience.
   •  Organize an entertaining speech for maximum audience impact.
2. Resources for Entertainment
Time: 8-10 minutes
Objectives:  •  Draw humorous and/or dramatic material from sources other than your own personal experience.
   •  Adapt your material to suit your topic, your own personality and the audience. Use entertaining material as a means of conveying a serious message.
3. Make Them Laugh
Time: 8-10 minutes
Objectives:  •  Prepare a humorous speech drawn from your own experience.
   •  Strengthen the speech by adapting and personalizing humorous material from outside sources.
   •  Deliver the speech in a way that makes the humor effective.
4. A Dramatic Talk
Time: 10-12 minutes
Objectives:  •  Develop an entertaining dramatic talk about an experience or incident, or give a dramatic reading.
   •  Include vivid imagery, characters and dialogue.
   •  Deliver the talk in an interpretative manner.
5. Speaking After Dinner
Time: 13-15 minutes
Objectives:  •  Prepare an entertaining after-dinner talk on a specific theme.
   •  Deliver the talk extemporaneously, using the skills developed in the preceding entertainment projects.

Note: For some speech projects, the presentation time may also include additional segments for such activities as question-and-answer periods, depending on the project.