Revision is one of the most crucial parts of the writing process. It gives you the opportunity to improve the quality and integrity of your speech. The word “revise” means to reconsider and alter in order to make something more effective. When you revise a speech, you are trying to improve the way the audience interprets your speech.
How do you effectively revise a speech? First, you begin by looking for vague or unclear portions that you can clarify, add new thoughts to, or add more descriptive detail to. You also scour your speech for areas that need to become more precise and concise. "Precise" means accurate, and "concise" means shortened or to the point. One final step when making revisions is looking for and eliminating any unnecessary or distracting thoughts. These thoughts will distract the audience from the main idea. By revising to add new thoughts, details, and precision, you will improve the overall quality and effectiveness of your speech.
Click on each tab below to read examples of effective ways to revise a speech.
Clarify
Add Descriptive Detail
Make It Concise
Read the example below and see how the revision improves the clarity.
Draft:
Recently, a close friend and I stopped talking with one another. She wanted to be liked just as much as everyone else, so she would show off how many books she read. We became friends; I wanted to be smart like her. But then she started to be mean to me when I said something she didn’t think was smart.
After Revisions:
Have you ever had a friendship suddenly go bad? Recently, a close friend and I stopped speaking to each other. It was hard because from the beginning I had really wanted to be her friend. She seemed smart, in a cool way, and said lots of funny things. She liked to talk about all the books she had read, and she always had a quick, sarcastic comeback whenever anyone made a joke.
How did the revision help add clarity and make the paragraph clearer and easier to understand?
Adding a rhetorical question at the beginning narrows the focus and gives the audience a clear idea of what the speech is going to be about. Also, adding the phrase, "...from the beginning..." puts the ideas in a sequential order, which helps with clarity.
Read the paragraph below and look for examples of descriptive details.
The truth is I wanted my friends to think I was smart and funny so that I could feel smart and funny. When I think back to that friendship, the thing I regret most was how much weight I put on another person’s ideas about who I was. I thought of my friend as “the cool one” and believed that the only way to be cool myself was to be like her—or for her to think I was like her.
How did the writer incorporate descriptive details?
Descriptive details help paint a picture and add a sensory experience. Using the words "smart," "funny," and "feel" adds depth that allows the audience to visualize and feel what the speaker is describing.
Take a look at the example below and think about which paragraph is more concise.
Draft:
When someone treats me poorly like that, I sometimes tell myself that it is because something is wrong with me—that I am “bad”— why else would they do something like that?
Then, I started to ask myself “why?” Why was she treating me like that? Maybe she has her own ideas and troubles going on; it didn’t have nearly as much to do with me as I thought. When someone treats me badly, it doesn’t mean I’m bad, but it does make me feel bad. I shared that with her and asked, “How can we be better friends?” After a while, we just realized that we don’t get along anymore, so we don’t have to keep being friends. It was hard, but I tried my best.
After Revisions:
It was the kind of thing I hadn’t thought much about. But after that day, I started to ask myself a lot of questions—questions that began with “why?” Why had my friend treated me like that? Maybe she had her own problems going on—maybe it wasn’t even about me. Why did she need to feel smarter than everyone else? Maybe she felt like she didn’t belong unless she had a special role to play, something she was better at. But the biggest, most important question I asked myself was Why did I care?
How did the revisions make the paragraph more concise?
The revisions eliminated some of the extra words and phrases that were distracting from the main point of the paragraph. By making it more concise and to-the-point, the paragraph became more focused.
Most likely, there are sections or sentences in your own speech that need clarification or areas that need to be more concise. Identify some places in your speech where you can clarify by adding descriptive details or replacing vague words with more precise language. Also look for sentences that distract from your main idea and need to be deleted. Keep the document open so that you can make additional revisions to your speech as you continue to work through this lesson.
