Anxiety effect on Public speaking
Public speaking is the process of communicating information to the large audience may be in schools, colleges, corporate or even in the private lives. For preparing for public speaking one needs to work on both verbal and non-verbal communications. It is the process of delivering the speech to a large audience. The main aim of public speaking is to inform, persuade and entertain.
This skill needs to be learnt, practiced and polished over the period of time so that they emerge out to be great public speakers. Proper preparations are required to overcome the feelings of hesitation, nervousness, slip of tongue and irregular changes in the voice modulation.
So three basic steps need to be learnt to overcome this public speaking fear…..
- Planning
- Preparation
- Practice
Planning for Public Speaking
This involves setting up your goal, understanding the core idea behind your presentation and the message you are planning to put across your audience.
- The speaker should try to understand the nature of the target audience. He should try to understand their previous knowledge about the subject and their future expectations.
- The speaker should visit the venue and familiarize himself with it.
- The speaker should try to analyze what are the objectives of his delivering the speech and what he wants to achieve through it.
- The speaker should also brainstorm to get the ideas for the speech.
Preparation for Public Speaking
- Theme: The speaker should try to write the topic or the theme of the speech in a brief and concise manner that will help to shortlist the matters to be included for the discussion. Some sub topics should also be listed for further references.
- Aids to be used in the speech: The speaker should decide about the tools and aids to be used while delivering the speech so as to make the process more effective and impressive. The tools like power point presentation, projector, white boards, black boards etc. can be used to make the process impressive and creative.
- Opening of the speech: The speaker should try to structure the speech in three parts – opening, body and the conclusion. The opening of the speech should be impressive highlighting the purpose of the subject trying to gain the attention of the audience. This part of the speech decides whether the audience would continue its interest in the speech or not. The introduction should be clear, creating an image amongst the audience about the direction of the speech.
- Body of the speech: The body of the speech should cover the detailed aspects of the theme. It should maintain an even flow from the text towards the conclusion. It should be elaborated through examples and the stories so that the interest of the audience is maintained. Try to include some humor in the content so that the audience’s attention does not fade away.
- Conclusion: The concluding part should summarize the whole of speech in a small paragraph highlighting again the objective and the theme of the discussion. The speech should be concluded in a very tactful manner and should not just fade away.
Practice for Public Speaking
Practice helps in overcoming the last leaf of hesitation, nervousness that may be left while preparing for the speech.
- The person should practice before the friends, colleagues, family members who can provide a positive feedback in improving the shortcomings.
- The person can record one’s own voice and listen to understand the improvements required in the voice modulations, pitch etc.
- The person should practice before the mirror to understand the changes in body language required or the hand movements etc.
- The person should watch that he adheres to the time in the best possible way. He should be able to keep his views within the stipulated time.
Hence by properly practicing the 3 P’s the person can polish his public speaking skills in the best of way.
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