The King's Speech

I think this movie can be used by teachers to show many aspects of preparation for a speech. One area that was significant centered on the idea of speech preparation.Encourage your students to prepare by saying it out aloud and not going over it in your head.Saying it aloud lets the speaker know how the words will sound and if there any difficulties.Our minds can create brilliant speeches that are very difficult to say.

All speakers need to be aware that there are certain words and phrases that cause us difficulty. These tongue traps are different for each person and the time to find out is not when you come to present. So saying a speech out aloud and saying it standing up are two positive ways that enable a speaker to feel confident about their delivery.

Interestingly the King always delivered his speeches standing up and the movie shows this in the final scenes. It made the King feel more comfortable and more attuned to the delivery of the words.

However for the purposes of the media, they took his picture after the speech had been delivered. This showed him seated at a desk as though that had been the place where the speech had been delivered from.

The way inwhich the speech notes were edited and highlighted also makes a very useful point.In one scene the actual speech notes are highlighted. Notice the symbols and underlinings that indicate where pause, stress and tonal change should occur.The book of this movie has actual copies of the speech notes and would be valuable for students if they could see the actual pages.

When the movie comes out on DVD it might a worthwhile exercise to show your students some of these scenes.