四川省内江市2014高考英语阅读理解和完形填空训练（12）附答案
It may help you to know that there is no such thing as a perfect speech. At some point in every speech, every speaker says something that is not understood exactly as he has planned. Fortunately, such moments are usually not obvious (明显的) to the listeners. Why? Because the listeners do not know what the speaker plans to say. They hear only what the speaker does say. If you lose your place for a moment, wrongly change the order of a couple of sentences, or forget to pause at a certain point, no_one_will_be_any_the_wiser. When such moments occur, don’t worry about them. Just continue as if nothing happened.
Even if you do make an obvious mistake during a speech, that doesn’t really matter. If you have ever listened to Martin Luth er King’s famous speech－“I Have a Dream”， you may notice that he stumbles (结巴) over his words twice during the speech. Most likely, however, you don’t remember. Why? Because you were fixing your attention on his message rather than on his way of speech－making.
People care a lot about making a mistake in a speech because they regard speech－making as a kind of performance rather than as an act of communication (交流). They feel the listeners are like judges in an ice－skating competition. But, in fact, the listeners are not looking for a perfect performance. They are looking for a well－thought－out speech that expresses the speaker’s ideas clearly and directly. Sometimes a mistake or two can actually increase a speaker’s attractiveness by making him more human.
As you work on your speech, don’t worry about being perfect. Once you free your mind of this, you will find it much easier to give your speech freely.
