Should you memorize your speech?
I have been doing a scan of advice given about wedding speeches on the internet for a booklet I am writing for the groom, best man and father of the bride who have to give speeches at weddings. One topic keeps raising it’s head. Should you memorize your speech?
Now as a father of four daughters, having been married twice myself and someone who does a fair bit of public speaking this is a topic close to my heart.
Just about every blog and article on the internet advise that you memorize your speech. So I did some research asking speech givers if memorizing their speech helped with their nerves. I asked via The Fear Course Community on the online course, through 5 other discussion boards and in a series of face-to-face interviews. In all I had 512 responses from people who had actually made a speech at a wedding and who had memorized their speech.
So does memorizing a speech help to allay public speaking nerves?
Results:
Yes it really helped: 132 (25.78%)
No it made them worse: 339 (66.2%)
I’m not sure it made any difference: 41 (8%)
So the vast majority thought memorizing the speech made their nerves worse. But why?
