即使在只有五分钟的简短的谈话中，一般的演讲者也会不知不觉地把谈话的范围涵盖得很广泛，到了结束的时候，听众对于他的主要论点究竟是什么仍感到有点困惑。不过，只有很少数的演讲者会注意到这种情况。他们有种错误的想法，认为这些观点在他们自己的脑海中如同水晶那般清楚，因此听众也应该对这些观点同样清楚才对。但事实并不是这样的，尽管演讲者对自己的观点已经思考过相当长的时间了，可他的观点对听众来说，却是全新的。这些观点就好像一把丢向听众的弹珠，有的可能落在听众身上，但绝大部分则零乱地掉在地上。听众可能会“记住一大堆的事情，但没有一样能够记得清楚”。In the longer talk a speaker is very apt to cover so much ground that at the close the listeners are a little hazy about all his main points. However, few speakers realize that. They are misled into assuming that because these points are crystal clear in their own minds, they must be equally lucid to their hearers. Not at all. The speaker has been pondering over his ideas for some time. But his points are all new to the audience; they are flung at the audience like a handful of shot. Some may stick, but most are liable to roll off in confusion. The hearers are liable, in the words of Shakespeare, to "remember a mass of things but nothing distinctly".Some anonymous Irish politician is reported to have given this recipe for making a speech: "First, tell them what you are going to tell them; then tell them; then tell them what you have told them." It is often highly advisable to "tell them what you have told them".
以下是一个好例子。演讲者是芝加哥一家铁路公司的一名交通经理：Here is a good example. The speaker, a traffic manager for one of Chicago's railways, ends his talk with this summary:
“各位：总之，根据我们在自己后院操作这套信号系统的经验，根据我们在东部、西部、北部使用这套机器的经验——它操作简单、准确，再加上在一年之内它阻止撞车事件发生而节省下的金钱，使我以最急切的心情建议：立即在我们的南方分公司采用这套机器。”In short, gentlemen, our own back-door yard experience with this block device; the experience in its use in the East, in the West, in the North; the sound operating principles underlying its operation; the actual demonstration in the money saved in one year in wreck prevention-move me most earnestly and unequivocally to recommend its immediate installation on our Southern branch.
各位看出他成功的地方了吗？你们可以不必听到他演讲的其余部分，就可以感到那些内容。他只用了几个句子，就把他整个演讲的重点全部概括进去了。You see what he has done? You can see it and feel it without having heard the rest of the talk. He has summed up in a few sentences, in sixty-two words, practically all the points he had made in the entire talk.
你不觉得像这样的总结很有效吗？如果你也有同感，那么，就运用这种技巧吧。Don't you feel that a summary like that helps? If so. make that technique your own.
