Cue cards might just save your life. When you're standing up in front of a crowd, making a recorded speech or broadcasting live there is always that chance that you are going to forget your lines and find yourself floundering before your audience.
Photo credit: Eric Wong
Certainly there is no excuse for not rehearsing and getting your speech and presentation to run smoothly. But however much you rehearse, and however much you might think you have everything down pat, there may come a time when your mind goes blank. That's where cue cards come in handy.
You don't have to write down every single word. In fact, if you want to sound anywhere near natural, you'd better not. But having keywords, prompts and key phrases jotted down and within easy reach might just pull you out of that still moment when all eyes are on you, and time seems to freeze over.
In today's video tutorial speaking expert and CEO of The Speaking Channel and Media Training Worldwide TJ Walker talks you through why cue cards are a good idea for any public speaker.
Video credit: Speaking Channel.TV
As TJ says:
''If you're doing anything where you're talking to a reporter over the phone, or you're doing a webcast and no one can see you, make it easy on yourself - use a script. Now preferably, just a few notes, an outline - I'm not a big fan of writing things out sentence after sentence, word for word. Why? Because for most people its hard to read like that without sounding like a robot or sounding canned or phony.
I wouldn't do that. But if you need a few simple words to jar your memory and keep you on track - do it.
''
If you can get away with it and you aren't standing up in front of a crowd hiding behind your cue cards, you owe it to yourself to take the easy option and have those ready prompts at arms length.
