Creativity – It’s All In the Mind! Boosting Your Child’s Speech Engagement

Speech crafting is a careful and meticulous art. A communicator often runs through countless drafts and practices before arriving at the final piece when drafting a speech or presentation. This can be already challenging for a seasoned communicator; for a young speaker, the barrier may dampen their confidence on stage. While there are various aspects to speech crafting, one of the related skills parents tend to ask about is creativity in writing.

If you have ever felt that your child is “not creative” enough in their speeches, there are various ways to help them build confidence. For the most part, the techniques related to creative script writing overlap with general creative writing skills. Our young speakers can build on these existing skills and adapt them in a context where they must engage and enthral their audience. Whether in terms of content or delivery style, your child can boost the creativity of their speech/presentation on stage.

In today’s post, we will unpack some general principles that your child can apply in their speech crafting process to create a creative speech or presentation!

Getting Up Close & Personal

If you have been following the blog posts thus far, you would be familiar with the importance that we place on story-telling or crafting (as part of the speech drafting process). A strong story (even a short one) can engage the audience, illustrate a message, and even move them into action. We echo the saying – stories sell, but only if told well. Like the attention needed for a strong speech structure, a story requires attention to detail to achieve its creative objective.

From that note, your child can start exploring stories as a method to boost the creativity of their script. They can start with the personal message they wish to highlight in their speech and link it to a personal experience underlying the same message. The aim is to bring the audience into the speaker’s personal space, making it feel like a cosy, intimate speech/presentation. The story should include emotions, opinions, or the conflict that makes the story stand out!

Make Your Movie Trailer

A typical speech or presentation structure follows the three elements of Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion. However, as your child grows in confidence in crafting a speech, they will realise that there are different ways to state their speech message without including it as a direct line. We like to think of this creativity tool as the trailer technique – if the speech is a movie, what would be in the teaser trailer to excite the audience?

For example, a movie trailer never reveals the twist or ending in the show. For a speech, this can be the big learning point or message that you have for the audience. Instead of starting with “Today, I am here to share with you about the importance of environmental conservation …”, we can go with the mysterious alternative: “The world that we live in is beautiful – can you imagine what might happen if all this nature were to disappear?”. In the latter example, we creatively draw the audience into the speech/presentation, with an emphasis on a problem!

Tools of the Trade

Beyond the content elements, your child’s delivery style or tools can help to bridge the creativity gap. These tools can be added as reminders in the script to ensure that your child remembers to add that creative touch during delivery. These tools also help make the speech/presentation more engaging and memorable. The key aspect is to ensure that the tools strengthen the main message (and not simply as a gimmick without purpose).

What are some of these tools? One key example is audience engagement tools – these are engagement action that helps turn a one-way presentation into a two-way engagement street. Such engagement tools can include questions, discussions, or even group activities (where applicable). Strong speakers will also incorporate visual elements such as props, presentation slides, or even a humble flipchart to convey the same message.

*** Bonus: You can achieve all three without having presentation slides ***

WATCH: How Can I Speak Without PowerPoint Slides? – #SpeakUP LIVE Q&A

Boost That Speech Creativity!

Being creative in a speech or presentation begins with the crafting process. For a young communicator, it entails careful attention to the speech content and delivery elements. Your child’s speech can stand out on stage by adding the various elements above. We hope that these tips will help to boost your child’s speech creativity!

If you are keen to take your public speaking skills & presentation skills (either business/corporate presentation / kids in-class presentation) to the next level so that you may communicate and deliver speeches with greater flair and charisma, feel free to check out our public speaking/ presentation skills course for adults and public speaking course for children below!

We want to help you bring out the best in your team, organization, and company. Public speaking and communication skills for the workplace, such as persuasion, remain a priority for most corporate training out there. We believe in staying ahead of the curve in sharing the contemporary communication skills to help you and your team remain relevant, competitive and nimble. Through our customized corporate training programmes, your team will benefit from an in-depth, hands-on, and potential-maximising public speaking & presentation skills training programme!

Feel free to reach out to us to curate your own public speaking corporate training programme for your team, company, or organization! Let us help you develop them into highly effective public speakers at work, empowered with effective presentation skills & storytelling skills – them giving speeches with charisma, influence and impact is something you can look forward to!