理智的人絕不會沒有計劃就開始建造房屋,那為什么他在對自己的目的是什么都還沒有概念的情況下,卻妄想開口演講呢?NO SANE MAN would start to build a house without some sort of plan; but why will he begin to deliver a talk without the vaguest notion of what he wishes to accomplish?
講演是有目的的旅程,必須事先繪好行程的圖表。一個人隨便從某處開始,通常也就終止于某處了。A talk is a voyage with a purpose, and it must be charted. The man who starts nowhere, generally gets there.
我想把拿破侖的一句話,漆成鮮紅的一尺高的大字,懸掛在地球上所有演講課的課堂門口:“戰(zhàn)爭是門科學,未經(jīng)計劃、思考,休想成功?!盜 wish that I could paint this saying of Napoleon's in flaming letters of red a foot high over every doorway on the globe where students of effective speaking foregather: "The art of war is a science in which nothing succeeds which has not been calculated and thought out."
這個道理同樣適用于講演。講演人是不是明白這點——或者明白,但有沒有付諸行動呢?這就不敢肯定了。許多講演的計劃與安排,花費的時間不會比烹煮一碗愛爾蘭燉菜多。That is Just as true of speaking as of shooting.But do speakers realize it-or, if they do, do they always act on it? They do not. Many a talk has just a trifle more plan and arrangement than a bow I of Irish stew.
如何安排是最好、最有效的方式?在沒有研究以前,誰也不能肯定。它永遠是個新問題,是每個講演人應該一再詢問自己的問題。我們無法對此提出絕對可靠的規(guī)則,不過仍然可以指出,進行較長的演講有三個方面很重要:引起注意、正文和結論。這三個階段,都各有歷久彌新的方法可供參考。What is the best and most effective arrangement for a given set of ideas? No one can say until he has studied them. It is always a new problem, an eternal question that every speaker must ask and answer himself again and again. No infallible rules can be given; but we can, at any rate, indicate the three major phases of the longer talk to get action: the attention step, the body, and conclusion. For each, there are some timetested methods of developing each phase.