Listen to expert speakers to improve your style

Top 100 speeches

Top 100 speeches showing good use of changes in rhythm and voice volume as well as use of strategic pauses, compiled by the American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank. These speeches were given in political and social situations. Nevertheless, some short videos give excellent opportunities to observe good modern English speakers' delivery of spoken messages. Control over rhythm, volume and silence is essential for conference speaking too.

We recommend two short speeches:

• Robert F. Kennedy's extemporaneuos speech upon Martin Luther King's assassination.
• John F. Kennedy's prepared speech at the Berlin wall in 1963.

Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman, the top scientist-educator-speaker for decades according to many listeners, talks informally in this BBC video interview. The occasion is the publication of his book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
Notice how the physicist's body language aids communication, never distracting from the message. Here you also see how pauses and varying the rhythm and volume of the voice focus attention on the messages.