Coaching Tools
For visual examples of gestures, great books, and other good stuff...
These communications-related websites are all bookmarked in my computer and the computers of all my associates. I access them regularly for ideas, insight, to check my accuracy and general knowledge.
The History Channel's Speech Archive
To get a sense of great speeches and great speakers, just spend a few minutes listening to audio files on this site. Everything from Lou Gehrig's farewell speech to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" along with literally hundreds of other famous speeches. Be careful! You'll end up spending hours...
BrainyQuote
This site lets you search thousands of quotations for just the right one for your speech. There are several sites like this on the web. This one is my favorite because of its comprehensiveness and its accuracy.
Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric
This site is a great introduction to the classic works of rhetoric. It makes the seemingly complex simple and gives you lots of information that you can use to impress your friends!
The American Presidency Project - Presidential Rhetoric
This site is one of the most comprehensive on the web for information on presidential rhetoric. Again, I can't stress enough: if you want to be a great speaker, listen to the great speakers and read the great speeches. Not every speech on this site is a masterpiece but they are all important and impart great lessons about communication on a mass scale.
This site contains a goldmine of information on speechmaking. Political speeches, a survey of ancient rhetoric, and a terrific section on great speeches in the movies make perusing this site a lot of fun.
For more information, please email: leeaundra@gmail.com or call 310.940.1180.
The Announcer’s Test
Developed by Radio Central in the 1940's to test a new announcer's reading ability, this is a fantastic exercise to warm up your speech muscles before that key event!
One hen,
Two ducks,
Three squawking geese,
Four limerick oysters,
Five corpulent porpoises,
Six pairs of Don Alberso's tweezers,
Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array,
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt,
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates with a marked propensity to procrastination and sloth,
Ten lyrical, spherical diabolical denizens of the deep who haul, crawl, around the corner of the quo of the queasy at the very same time.