Count Your Minutes:
Make the Most of Your Speaking Time
by Tatiana Claudy

"You can ask me for anything you like, except time," said Napoleon Bonaparte to one of his subordinates. We writers, when invited to speak, understand that soldier's feelings. How often we long for a few more minutes, but the hosts of a meeting usually do not allow speakers to exceed their time limits. Can we squeeze our adult-size speech into baby-size time limit?

Yes, we can. From my five years as a speaker and two as an interpreter for American speakers in Russia, I have identified seven tips for getting the most from your speaking time.

1. Know Your Time Limit
Ask how strict the speech time is. At one convention, speakers had exactly eight-and-a-half minutes, and then music muffled their voices.

Most often, we are allotted more time than that. When a host gives you about 20-30 minutes, find out what the audience wants and needs. That may not be the same. If you are scheduled at the end of a long meeting (especially during the week), it is better to take the minimum time to keep your listeners' attentions and interests.

2. Eliminate Long Introductions
To save time, ask your host to include your short biography in his or her introduction. Distribute flyers if the audience needs to know more information.

On the other hand, if you need to introduce somebody, first find out where this person sits. Otherwise you may waste valuable minutes looking for this person. Also be sure that he or she does not mind being introduced (although if it's in the program, you may not have an option of skipping the introduction).

3. Organize Your Speech
Type your notes (or outline). Double-space, and number pages. Also, highlight main points. Write quotes on numbered index cards. When speaking at a religious organization, bookmark Bible verses you are using. All these tips will save time.

4. Prune Your Speech
Speak in front of your friends to find out whether you have "a speech tic"—a habit of repeating "you see," "you know," "you understand," "I believe," etc. Another way to discover this is to record a phone conversation and play it back to learn whether you have any "tics." As soon as you become aware of them, do your best to get rid of this habit. These "tics" are like weeds—they choke meaningful words in your speech.

Also, Avoid saying useless phrases such as "I do not have time to discuss this in detail," "I hope you are not bored with this," or "I have to leave this for another time." Remember the warning of Oliver W. Holms: "...And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs!" Eliminate "urs" or "ers" in your speech because they irritate your audience. Finally, practice pronouncing foreign names and words correctly to avoid stumbling over them. To check pronunciations of Latin words and phrases, for instance, go to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

5. Show, Don't Tell
Let posters, charts, and diagrams do the work for you. When talking on Biblical topics, use handouts with Bible references. If you illustrate your speech with objects, put them on a table in advance. Use only what is necessary since extra items may confuse you, and distract listeners.

6. Exclude Q & A
According to John Hasling in The Audience, the Message, the Speaker, a question period "can be the most challenging aspect of a speech, and perhaps the most fruitful in terms of communication...be sure you allow enough time for it." That’s true unless your time is very limited. If you have a short speaking time, try to exclude a Q & A session, or ask the host to limit the number of questions. If you allow questions, ensure they’re on topic. Moreover, do not allow any one to monopolize the session by asking multiple questions.

7. Be Culturally Sensitive
When speaking to a foreign audience, find out whether the interpretation will be simultaneous or sentence by sentence, which substantially reduces your speech time. Give your interpreter a copy of your speech and check whether he understands everything, especially jokes and idioms. (Keep in mind that some phrases may not translate appropriately, so be careful of the words you use.)

When quoting and using examples from the Bible, be sure your audience has a similar translation. For example, an American speaker said to a group of Russians, "The Book of Esther is the only one in the Bible that does not mention God." His listeners were confused because the Russian Bible translates Esther 6:1a, "That night the Lord took away sleep from the king." The explanation "ate" five minutes of the speaker's 30-minute speech.

Following these steps will help you to stretch your speaking time and communicate with your audience more efficiently. Regardless of how strict your speech limit is and how serious your topic, as Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe said, "One always has time enough, if one will apply it well."