So. Delivering a speech. Unless you’ve done public speaking before or you’re just a chronic over-speaker like me, it’s likely that you’re pretty worried. And that is 100% all right because the very aim of this post is to help you with your public speaking skills, which I'll do by telling you my story and experience with public speaking and what I've learnt as a seasoned yapper.
Let’s go back to the horrendous year of 2020 so that we can discuss something that got me here, writing to you right now; the year of my first big school speech. Imagine me but four years younger, trying my hand at public speaking for the first time. I had signed up at the beginning of the term because I wanted to challenge myself and I walked away with one of the best experiences of my life. I was doing my speech on Gender Equality, and I tell you, I was shaking in my metaphorical boots, however, I was more nervous about messing up and having it go online in the buildup to the actual event than actually speaking. Then, a silly thing called sickness intervened and struck me down just a few days before my talk and I had to film myself, long story short, I got super worked up about speaking in front of people for no good reason.
Then, I did, a lot more things that involved public speaking which made me a million times more poised in talking to other people and speaking my voice and opinions, and made me look and feel so much more confident in myself last year. One of the main ways I conveyed this air of confidence is through body language. I did some research on how to emulate confidence, I read some Robert Green, who is basically an amazing author on psychology and things like human nature, power, and other things like that; in other words, everyone in my year is scared of me, but anyways, it was all about how I presented myself that made my talk so much better than it was before.
Self-presentation
I could tell you things like, “keep your shoulders back and your chin up! Remember: standing up straight means that you’ll do great!”
But I’m not going to. Because everyone has heard that advice hundreds of times, and most of the time, you stand up straight for the whole of the three seconds you enter the room then curl into a hunchback who lives in a tower. So you want to assume an assertive position that’s open rather than closed off, refrain from crossing your arms over your torso, or crossing your legs, and opt for feet facing your audience and arms addressing them.
And I realized this when re-watching those speeches.; I fidgeted a lot. Be it shifting my weight from leg to leg, rubbing my palm with my thumb, or looking around a lot when I was trying to remember my points.
And obviously, if it’s your first time doing public speaking, you will have some nerves building up, but be assured that you know your topic, that you know your speech, and that if you don’t quote it word for word, anyone’s even going to know because you are the individual author, this is just to help you in the future when you gain more experience and start you off.
Fillers
Along with this, you need to watch your language; and I know. You want to use big words to seem smarter than you already are, but that’ll most likely only leave you with an audience that doesn’t understand you. If you're taking the time to remember your next line, sometimes taking a breath and not saying anything is the most professional thing because if you’re constantly saying “like” or “Uhm” or just stalling and using filler words, it doesn’t do anything, it just messes with the fluency of your speech and interferes with your points.
Making effective points
This leads to my next point, you need to make good points. Very good points. Points that are concise and easy to understand. Your points are basically opinions or statements that you’re making and want the audience to believe. For example, the point I made when starting this part of the speech was that “you need to make good points. Very good points.” You need to get your point across in the most concise way. Like, don’t ramble on about how your grandma makes blueberry jam with Sicilian lemon zest after she went to Italy when she was 19 where she met your grandfather and they had their honeymoon just to make the point that you like blueberry jam.
It's really not that deep
And obviously, if it’s your first time doing public speaking, you will have some nerves building up and you will be nervous about things like how your hair looks or how fast you're speaking or if you stutter while you talk, well guess what dude- no one is focusing on all these things as much as you are.
When you're up on that stage, you are your own worst enemy and critic. You're gonna be focusing on what every person in the room is thinking about you and worrying if people think you're cringe or realized that you messed up that last line. From an experienced public speaker, I can tell you that this is true, and any performer or speaker that you would talk to would say the same thing. And that's just a matter of insecurity which is normal and human.
This leads onto my next points: self-soothing and self-assurance.
Self-soothing
There are many ways to self-soothe before you speak or you perform. One of my favorites is reading through your speech or your lines multiple times, not only does this help you feel more confident in yourself but it also puts the lines you weren't one hundred percent sure about into your short-term memory store and aids you in remembering your lines because you're using maintenance rehearsal to remember your lines. Another is listen to your favorite or your comfort song before your performance and know that once it finishes you get to perform with the comfort that it provided you with. My last method to self soothe is tracing circles in your palm with the fingers from your other hand. It's a bit weird to describe but I'll explain. You do one circle clockwise on your left palm with your right index finger, then one circle anticlockwise. Then you do another clockwise circle on your left palm but with your middle finger of your right hand, then one anticlockwise with the middle finger, and so on and so forth until you run out of fingers on one hand then you switch hands and do it again.
Self-assurance
This point is short but important. You know your speech. You have practiced your speech. You are going to do great. No one in the audience knows what you've written down, so even if you forget something or use a different word to make the same point- no one is going to realize that.
For everyone reading this before delivering a big speech, good luck and please tell me how it went!
good luck to everyone and see you next time,
-thestudentblogger
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