Photo credits: https://pronunciationstudio.com/david-crystal/ 

A few weeks ago I went to a talk from the one and only David Crystal, linguist supreme. The event was part of the annual Birmingham Literature Festival and he was there to talk about eloquence and what it means to be a great public speaker.

For many of us, public speaking of any kind provokes a racing heart, sweating from weird places, and a palpable flight impulse. Others just seem naturally gifted at the whole ordeal. David Crystal sought to cast away those divisions in favour of the more enticing idea that anyone can become a great public speaker.

And coming away from it, I believe him. He has a knack for making complex things seem pretty simple. He spoke for a mere 45 minutes in ten minute chunks of memorable pointers. Useful titbits included:

• don’t use technical jargon if most of your audience won’t understand it
• remember to pace yourself slightly slower than everyday conversation
• storytelling is always a great tool, especially at the start of a speech
• try to relate what you’re talking about to your particular audience
• use distractions to your advantage, and keep calm in the face of them

But his first and most memorable point wasn’t even about language – it was about audience attention. Research suggests that our attention tends to lull every 5-10 minutes before picking up again. If a speaker goes on for any longer than ten minutes on a single point, we get fidgety, zone out, or start checking our phones. Test it out for yourself in your next lecture. The key for public speakers is to be aware of this, to keep points short, and to take a break every ten minutes so the audience can re-energise. And a break can be anything from taking a drink of water, to shuffling your notes, to drawing attention to something in your common surroundings.

And it translates to writing too. In his new book ‘The Gift of the Gab’, each chapter will only take you ten minutes to read, and at the end of each is a short interlude that draws on real world examples of what the preceding chapter was about.

Crystal made sure to keep his points short and sweet in his speech (turning each break in to a running joke) and it really worked. To take a stark contrast, I went to the KCL EcoSoc event that saw Vivienne Westwood talk for an hour …and she did just that – spoke (rather ineloquently) for a solid hour. No breaks, no discernible direction, and no timekeeping even in the Q&A.

Sceptical that these simple things can make or break public speaking? The proof is right here – I still remember all of Crystal’s talk from October without having written a single note. And I couldn’t tell you what Vivienne Westwood was talking about just yesterday.

If you’re interested in what more David Crystal has to say about public speaking, I can vouch for the quality of his new book ‘The Gift of the Gab’. Highly recommended!