Ask HN: How do I improve my impromptu speaking? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I improve my impromptu speaking?

I struggle to gather my thoughts quickly when talking about random topics presented to me.

In general, Toastmasters is excellent for improving your speaking skills. Find a club near you, visit them and see if you like it: https://www.toastmasters.org

They also do a thing called table topics where at every meeting members are asked to stand up and speak on a random topic for two minutes. Sounds scary, but if you practice it regularly, you'll be surprised how quickly you improve.

Agreed here. And also when you find a group of friends who want to achieve the same goal as you do, you'll find that those opportunities to improve your impromptu keep growing. For example when competition time comes up. I remember how we would train for those. It's all about getting into it. Once you find the flow you can decide if you want to practice more to perfect it. But otherwise it becomes more or less like a bicycle. You don't forget how to cycle. But the occasional ride to keep you fit will help :D

My 0.02 What you need to do is let go of being so deliberate. Speak to your audience and stop focusing on what may be judged coming out of your mouth. Simple but effective. if you want to be interesting, be interested - "Not sure who said it"

It depends if you want to be entertaining or informative/thoughtful.

For informative/thoughtful, you basically need to have coherent thoughts on a given subject before you speak. You can't just magically figure things out as you open your mouth, there isn't nearly enough time.

For entertaining effect, I guess it's more art than science. Try watching some good sitcoms and standup comedians perhaps?

Practice. That's really what you need to do. There are tricks you can learn to keep up speaking while you're formulating something decent to say, but more than anything it's practice. Go to open mic nights and practice also watch/listen to other people. You'll being to see how they do it and it will help you too.

I second Practice and reading whatever language you want to speak in. You could hack it by having a scenario specific list of quotes,phrases and oratorical devices in your sleeve to show off ( like a magician always has a deck of cards ready) I would suggest reading a whole lot and then going out and doing it

Learn the original way. Just mumble through it, eventually you will get better.

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