Rehearsing out loud: timed, recorded and in front of someone
Say the talk out loud, standing, at full volume: three timed runs, one recorded, one in front of a listener, and a plan dated back from the day.
- Start here: the essentials
- What rehearsal is, and what it is not
- What the research shows, and what it does not
- Timed runs, a recording and a listener
- A rehearsal plan counted back from the date
- The room, the microphone and your shoes
- The three studies, the listener's questions and other practice
- See it: Lena's three runs
- Practice: run the talk three times
- Your talk
- Check your work
- Knowledge check and scenario
Start here Essentials
Rehearsal is saying the talk out loud, standing, with a clock running. Four moves cover the minimum: three timed runs, one recording and one listener.
- Stand up and say the whole talk out loud with your notes, and time it. Keep going through any mistake (what rehearsal is, timed runs).
- Do it twice more, and write the three times down. Compare them with your slot (timed runs).
- Record one run on your phone and listen to it. Cut words from your notes wherever you were reading (a recording).
- Say it once to one person and ask what your main point was. Use their answer to fix the talk (a listener).
Minimum time: about 45 minutes of running time over two evenings. Done when: the rehearsal sheet shows three times within your slot and one listener's answer.
What rehearsal is, and what it is not Understand
Rehearsal is practice of the whole talk in conditions close to the real ones: out loud, standing up, at the volume you will need, with the notes you will hold. It finds the weak spots in what you have written, such as a sentence you stumble over, a point that runs long or a transition that does not connect, so you can fix them before anyone is listening. The open textbook Stand Up, Speak Out puts the purpose this way: you practice to find weak spots in your delivery and fix them (Stand Up, Speak Out on practicing for delivery). Convention
The same textbook says what practice is not. Reading your notes over, running through the talk in your head and repeating it aloud over and over do not count as rehearsal in its sense. Each of those skips something that the room will ask of you: your mouth has to form the words, your voice has to reach the back, and you have to get from one point to the next while time passes.
Say it out loud, standing, and keep going
Three habits turn a run-through into rehearsal.
- Out loud, at full volume. Exploring Public Speaking says to practice at normal speaking volume and standing up, behind something that stands in for a lectern, wearing the shoes you will speak in (Exploring Public Speaking on practicing your delivery). A whispered run in a chair misses what your breath and your feet do when you stand.
- With a clock. Stand Up, Speak Out says to use a clock and a mirror, and adds that most novice speakers speak too fast, not too slow (Stand Up, Speak Out on reducing communication apprehension).
- Through the mistake. If you stumble, keep going to the end, as you would have to in front of people. Stopping to start over trains you to stop, and the room will not let you.
Mental rehearsal, picturing yourself giving a good talk, has a place in managing nerves. The same textbook says visualization is no substitute for practicing out loud. Convention Nerves and the unexpected covers the nerves.
What the research shows, and what it does not Understand
Three published studies look at how preparation relates to how well students speak. They are the main research behind the advice to rehearse out loud and in front of people, so it is worth saying exactly what they found. All three studied students in college public speaking courses, and all three found associations, which is a weaker thing than a cause.
| Study | Who and how | What went with better results |
|---|---|---|
| Menzel and Carrell, 1994 | 119 public speaking students were videotaped, and their speeches were rated and compared with questionnaires on how they prepared | Higher-rated speeches went with more total preparation time, more out-loud rehearsals and more rehearsals in front of an audience. Higher state anxiety went with lower quality. |
| Smith and Frymier, 2006 | Students reported how often they used each of several practice methods, then gave a videotaped speech | Students who practiced in front of an audience scored higher than students who did not, and students who practiced in front of larger audiences scored higher than those with smaller ones. |
| Pearson, Child and Kahl, 2006 | Students kept semester-long journals of how they prepared each speech; grades were compared by regression | More total preparation time went with higher speech grades, and so did more time on delivery and practice. |
The citations are Menzel and Carrell, Communication Education 43(1), 17 to 26 (doi 10.1080/03634529409378958); Smith and Frymier, Communication Quarterly 54(1), 111 to 125 (doi 10.1080/01463370500270538); and Pearson, Child and Kahl, Communication Quarterly 54(3), 351 to 366 (doi 10.1080/01463370600878321).
We read abstracts and publication records for these studies, not the full papers, so the table reports what the abstracts say. The pattern across them is the same: students who rehearsed more, out loud, and before other people, tended to get better ratings. Research finding
These are associations among college students in speaking courses, not experiments. A student who rehearsed more may also have cared more, started earlier or been more skilled to begin with, so the studies do not show that rehearsal caused a better speech. They also give no number of run-throughs to aim for. The number of timed runs in this chapter, three, comes from one textbook's rule for checking the length of a talk, and we say so where we use it. How well a toast, a eulogy or a meeting report goes depends on much more than the number of times you said it.
So the chapter's advice is a reasonable use of a limited body of evidence, not a promise. Rehearse out loud, standing, with a timer. Do at least one run in front of a person. Expect the talk to change as a result.
Timed runs, a recording and a listener Understand
Timing: three runs
Exploring Public Speaking gives the only rule we found for how many times to time a talk: time yourself at least three times. Its example is a five-to-seven-minute slot, where it says to aim for six minutes. It also says times as spread out as 5:45, 5:12 and 6:37 mean the content is not yet consistent, and that nerves usually make you faster, so a 5:06 rehearsal will probably come in under 5:00 on the day. Convention That rule applies to timing runs only. It says nothing about how many runs make a good speech.
Three practical points follow from it.
- Aim for the middle of the slot. A talk that fits only when everything goes right will run over when one story gets a laugh. A talk in the middle has room for a pause, a stumble or an interruption.
- Read the spread. If your three times are close together, the content has settled. If they differ by a lot, something in the talk is still changing from run to run, often a story that grows or a point you skip. Fix that before you worry about the clock.
- Expect the real thing to be faster. The textbook's warning about nerves is the reason to treat the last run's time as a ceiling for the day, not a prediction. If you time at the top of your slot, you have no margin.
To know your own speaking rate, record yourself speaking or reading for about a minute, count the words and divide by the minutes. Baruch College's speaking center gives this method and suggests aiming at about 140 words a minute for clear presenting (Baruch College's Speaking Rate page). The timing tool's second calculator does the arithmetic, and the first one turns your rate and your slot into a word budget. Our planning figure is 130 words a minute, and your measured rate replaces it.
A recording
Record one run, in audio or video, and listen to it. Stand Up, Speak Out recommends it, and says a mirror works if you have no recording device. A recording shows things you cannot hear while speaking. The textbook's main example is that it shows when you are reading more than you thought, and the fix is to rewrite your note cards with fewer words on them (see Shaping a short talk for cards and scripts). It also reports that very anxious students are often pleasantly surprised by how they come across.
When you play it back, listen three times, once for each question: Can I hear every word? Where did I speed up? Where did I look down? Write down the answers, and change the notes, not your opinion of yourself.
A listener
Say the talk once to a real person. Exploring Public Speaking says that even with one listener you should look around the room as if it were full. The practice textbook adds the key point about feedback: peers often hold back criticism unless asked directly. So give the listener questions, and write the answers down.
| Ask your listener | What the answer tells you |
|---|---|
| Could you hear me, every word? | Whether your volume and your pace work at this distance |
| What was my main point, in your words? | Whether the talk says what you meant. If the answer differs from your sentence, the opening or the close needs work. |
| Did I mispronounce anything? | Whether a name or a term needs another check (Finding what to say) |
| Was anything distracting: my hands, "um," looking down? | What to change first; the fix for fillers is in Voice, microphone and the room |
| Was any part too fast? | Where to add a pause |
| Is there anything I could cut? | What goes if the schedule runs behind |
The rehearsal sheet has these questions as a feedback list, and a place for the three times. Then make the change. A remark you do not write down is gone by the day.
A rehearsal plan counted back from the date Understand
People put rehearsal off, and rehearsal then collapses into one run the night before. A plan with dates is a way to make the runs happen. The plan below is our convention, built from the sources in this chapter. No source gives these dates. The funeral guides say to practice several times and again on the morning of the service (National Funeral Directors Association's Remembering A Life), the UK's National Association of Funeral Directors says to practice aloud at least three or four times and once in the room if possible (NAFD's guide to writing a eulogy), and the textbook gives the timing rule and the listener. The days come from us. Our convention
| When | What | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days before | A finished draft, with notes or a script made | You cannot rehearse what is not written. Count the words against the slot. |
| 6 days before | The first out-loud run, standing | It finds the weak spots while there is time to fix them. |
| By 3 days before | Three timed runs, one of them recorded and played back | The times show whether the length and the content have settled. |
| By 2 days before | One run in front of a listener, with the questions above | It gives you the main-point check and a first taste of an audience. |
| When the organizer allows | A visit to the room, and a microphone check | See the room below, and Saying yes for how to ask. |
| The day before, or that morning | A final run, with the notes you will carry | It refreshes the order of points and settles the first line. |
The rehearsal page shows these rows with dates counted back from the date you saved in setup. With fewer than three days left, the plan compresses to today and tomorrow: draft and first run today, the timed runs and the listener tomorrow, the final run that morning. A talk tomorrow is still worth three timed runs. It is also what the quick start page is for.
Each step is small. The aim is not to have a perfect talk by day three. It is to find out by day three what is wrong with it.
The room, the microphone and your shoes Understand
If you can get into the room beforehand, go, and say part of the talk in it. Stand Up, Speak Out says practice in the actual room catches problems such as incompatible computers, a blown projector bulb and sun glare. Lumen's open textbook lists the questions to ask the host, among them when the room can be reached for a rehearsal, and notes that losing a few minutes of speaking time to get equipment working beats going without (Lumen's Mastering the Location). The person who asked you can usually say who holds the key. Ask the authority
If there will be a microphone, try it, with your voice and your notes in your hands. Shure's guide for presenters says to record yourself, to check in with the audio technician if there is one, and to walk around the room with a wireless microphone beforehand to check coverage and noise (Shure's guide to microphones for presenters). The details of handling each kind are in Voice, microphone and the room.
If you cannot visit, rehearse with a stand-in. The textbook suggests a kitchen counter or an ironing board for a lectern, and says to wear the shoes you will speak in. Bring only what you will carry on the day. Put the day's checklist on the day-of sheet.
The three studies, the listener's questions and other practice Go deeper
The studies, with their designs and limits
The table in What the research shows is the short form. Here is what to keep in mind if you read the originals.
- Menzel and Carrell (1994) combined ratings of videotaped speeches with questionnaires. Its significant predictors of quality were grade point average, total preparation time, number of rehearsals for an audience, and state anxiety, which went with lower quality. Its preparation measures came from the students' questionnaires.
- Smith and Frymier (2006) asked students how many times they used each of several practice methods and compared that with the scores they got. It reports that practicing before an audience and before larger audiences went with higher scores. Those who practiced in front of people may have been the students who had people available, who started early or who cared more.
- Pearson, Child and Kahl (2006) used the semester-long journals. It reports no hour figures in the abstract, and we do not quote any.
The honest summary is the one in the Limits box: a consistent pattern in student speakers, with no run count and no proof of cause.
Other numbers of runs
Exploring Public Speaking gives three timing runs. The UK funeral directors' guide says to practice a eulogy aloud at least three or four times, once in the room if you can, and the American Remembering A Life guide says to practice several times and again on the morning of the service. They agree on a handful of runs. None says how many make a good talk. If you rehearse more than three, the extra runs are for the weak spots, not for the clock.
Practicing the questions
For a presentation with questions afterward, practice answering them the way you rehearse the talk: aloud, with a listener who asks the hard ones. Marietta College's handout says to predict likely questions and practice answering them. A short presentation has the method.
A lectern stand-in
The textbook's suggestion of a counter or an ironing board is also a way to practice with your notes. Set the notes on it at the height of the real lectern, look down only for the cue word, and look up for the sentence. If your notes sit flat on a kitchen table, your head tips down and your voice goes with it.
See it: Lena's three runs See it
Lena Park, who uses she/her, is fictional, and every fact about her here is invented for this manual. Lena, 29, is giving a toast at her grandmother Ruth Park's 80th birthday dinner. It is a Saturday evening in the private room of a restaurant. Fourteen family members sit around one long table. Her uncle Daniel Park is hosting and toasts first, and Lena speaks second, after the main course. There is no microphone, and she has two minutes. Her plan is one main point, one story, a close and "Please join me in raising a glass to Grandma Ruth."
Known: the slot of two minutes, the setting, the order, and the plan. Lena's talk comes to about 260 words at her measured rate of 130 words a minute, which is about two minutes.
Assumed: that nerves will make her faster on the night, as the textbook says they usually do. Lena also assumes the dinner will not run late, so her two minutes will be the two minutes.
Her plan, counted back. The dinner is on a Saturday. Using the convention in this chapter, she writes the draft the Saturday before, makes the first out-loud run on Sunday, does three timed runs and a recording by Wednesday, says it to one person by Thursday, and runs it once more on Friday or on Saturday morning.
The three runs. By Wednesday, Lena has stood at her kitchen counter with her cards and run the toast three times. The times are 1:52, 2:05 and 1:58. The second run was the longest because she added a sentence about the burned dumplings. The three times span 13 seconds, from 1:52 to 2:05, and average about 1:58.
| Run | Time | Against two minutes | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1, with cards | 1:52 | 8 seconds under | Looked down at the cards for the whole story |
| 2, recorded | 2:05 | 5 seconds over | Added a sentence; the recording shows she read the story from the card |
| 3, with shorter cards | 1:58 | 2 seconds under | Four key words on the story card in place of sentences |
What she changes. The recording of run two shows she read most of the story. She rewrites the story card with four key words in place of the sentences, and puts a mark where she will pause before the toast; run three uses the new card. On Thursday she says the toast to her mother and asks the six questions. Her mother's answer to "what was my main point" is that Ruth taught every grandchild one dish, which matches Lena's sentence. The spread is small, 13 seconds on a two-minute talk, much tighter than the textbook's example, so the content looks settled. Under her assumption, nerves will speed her up, so the night's run should land at or under the third run's 1:58.
Open facts, and who settles each.
- Whether two minutes holds on the night. Lena's runs show it can, under her assumption about nerves, and the clock on the night shows whether it does. She marks one sentence to drop if Daniel's toast runs long.
- How firm the two minutes is. Her uncle Daniel, the host, settles it, and she asks him (Saying yes).
- Whether the restaurant's room is loud enough for her to stand at one end. Daniel's call to the restaurant settles it, and she tries the volume in the room if she can get in early.
- What she does if her voice catches. She decides that in Nerves and the unexpected.
The runs do not show that the toast will go well. They show the length, the spread, the places she read from the card and what her listener remembered.
Free pages that show the method: the practice chapter of Stand Up, Speak Out (what rehearsal is and the listener's questions), Exploring Public Speaking's practicing your delivery (the timing rule and the lectern stand-in), and Baruch College's guide to measuring your speaking rate.
Practice: run the talk three times Practice
Minimum: three timed out-loud runs standing, one of them recorded, and one run to a listener with the questions asked. Time: about 45 minutes of running and listening, over two sessions. Materials: your notes or script, a timer, your phone, one willing listener, and the rehearsal sheet.
- Set up. Put your notes where the lectern would be, stand, and start the timer. If you can, wear the shoes you will wear.
- Run one, all the way through. Keep going through any mistake. Stop the timer at the last line and write the time on the sheet. Mark where you got lost or reached for a word.
- Fix, and run two, recorded. Change what run one showed. Record this run, and write the time. Listen to the recording for where you read and where you rushed.
- Cut the notes. Remove words from wherever you read. Run three with the shorter notes, and write the time.
- Read the spread. If the three times are far apart, find what changed between runs and fix it. If they sit near the middle of your slot, you are on target. If they sit above the middle, cut a point, not your speaking speed.
- Say it to one person. Ask the six questions, write down the answers, and change the notes once.
Run in the room, with the microphone. If the organizer lets you in, run the opening and the close in the room at full volume, and if there is a microphone, with it. Note where the sound drops, where the glare falls and where you will stand, and write them on the day-of sheet.
Your talk Your talk
Check your work Check your work
Criteria
- Did you say the talk out loud, standing, at full volume, at least three times with the clock running?
- Are the three times on the rehearsal sheet, and do they sit within your slot, near its middle?
- Did you record one run and listen to it?
- Did one listener hear it and answer the main-point question in their own words?
- Did you change the notes after the recording and after the listener?
- Do you know your own rate, or have you replaced the 130 planning figure with a measured one?
Worked example
Lena's rehearsal sheet shows 1:52, 2:05 and 1:58, one run marked recorded, and a Thursday run with her mother as listener. Her mother's answer, that Ruth taught every grandchild one dish, matches Lena's main point. The cards now carry fewer words, and one sentence is marked as the cut. It passes. It does not show that the night will run to time, because that depends on the dinner and on her nerves, so she keeps the marked sentence.
Common mistakes
- Reading it over. Reading the notes silently is not rehearsal. Say it aloud.
- Stopping to start over. Keep going through a mistake.
- Timing once. One time tells you nothing about the spread.
- Ending at the top of the slot. Nerves usually speed you up, but a run at the limit leaves nothing for a laugh or a pause.
- Asking "was that okay?" Ask the six questions. The textbook says peers often hold back criticism unless asked directly.
- Waiting until the night before. The dated plan exists to prevent it.
What is still unresolved
How many runs will make your talk good is not answered by any source we found. The three timed runs here are one textbook's rule for timing. Whether the real talk runs to time is for the clock on the day. Whether you can use the room beforehand is for the organizer (Saying yes). Pauses, volume and where to look are in Voice, microphone and the room, and nerves are in Nerves and the unexpected.