Tips for Public
Speaking
by
Thota Srinivas
When
you are asked to introduce yourself or speak before a crowd, feeling tense is quite
natural, especially in a new, unusual and unexpected situation among strangers.
There
is nothing you can do in a situation that gives you no second option but speak.
The only thing you can do is to muster up your courage and aptitude to speak
leaving the result on God.
Here
are some tips that can help you in getting through this situation.
1.Take a deep
breath
Before
you begin speaking take a deep breath and let it out as if you are leaving your
tension with the breath....then give a smile, not a broad one- a mild one with
a pleasant, friendly and a confident expression.
2.Greet
everyone
Greet
with an air of giving importance to everyone who is present there.
Let
each and every person think that he is given importance in spite of being an
ignorable member in the crowd.
3. Have a Cheerful Countenance: Greet
with a cheerful countenance warmly and cordially giving an eye contact to most
of the people. A cheerful countenance can speak oodles about our confidence and the conviction we are poised with and can evoke a hypnotizing interest in the the audience towards the speaker and his speech.
4.
Introduce yourself
How
you introduce yourself or what you say to introduce yourself matters the most.
People judge us from the words we choose to describe ourselves.
If we
cannot glorify ourselves in a way that lets the people regard us sincerely, who
can? This doesn’t mean that we must exaggerate our attributes and position to a
point of making ourselves seem absurd; we must talk about ourselves in an
honest and confident way without distorting the facts.
5.
Speak Consciously
Do
not speak fast; speak clearly, slowly and sufficiently loud to make everyone
understand.
Do
not look at one place or one person the whole time. Keep looking at everyone
with a gentle smile while speaking.
Speaking
is certainly an art which can be mastered provided one thoroughly enjoys doing
so.
Choose
to speak those things the listeners might take interest in . They need not
always be about new things; they can also be about things people are already
aware of but put forth through a different perspective and insight.
When
we utter words before a crowd, every word and expression matters. So be
conscious of what you speak and how you express.
Always
remember, a short speech spoke consciously and confidently makes an everlasting
impression and positive impact than a long and laborious speech spoken
haphazardly without empathizing with the listeners.
Such
a speech can instigate negative responses instead of influencing positively.
6.
Body Language
What
we want to convey is half conveyed through our non-verbal communication which
includes our attire, posture, countenance, gait on the stage, gestures, and eye
contact. They, in fact, form our body language which is quite effective in
communicating facts about our ability and potential. So never let your body
language go against yourself.
Be
conscious of how you present yourself before the audience. Bear in mind that
people’s eyes are all over us.
A
slight nervous movement of our legs or hands done sub-consciously can do more
to attract the people’s attention than the rhetoric speech we are presenting.
Moreover, it affects our presentation.
If
gestures and gait on the stage is a part of how you communicate freely, then
let it happen by itself without confining yourself to a rigid posture or
unpractised hand movements. Anything done to suppress the natural movement of
our body can make us nervous and seem fake.
7.
Sustain calmness , composure and dignity
Sometimes we get
so excited or emotional or enthusiastic that we fail to have a control over our
emotions or feelings and make them obvious through our expressions or sudden
outburst of unexpected behavior.
To avoid such
embarrassing experiences we need to have an understanding and practice of those
aspects of our speech which shall make us cross the borderline of composure and
restraint.
If maintaining dignity and decorum is one side
of the coin, the flip side is about saving it from our own irrepressible
demeanor.
8.
Variety is the spice
Let not your
speech have full of assertions, statements and declarations. If the speech
lacks variation of sentences, the listeners may feel that you are dumping
information onto them and thus might display lack of interest. Let your speech
embedded with exclamations, imperatives, rhetorical questions, figurative language,
statistics, and instances from real life, quotations, anecdotes, humour,
amazing facts, tales and facts. A concoction of all these shall spice up your
speech and stir up the interests of even the prejudiced and passive listeners.
9. Voice Modulation and intonation matters
Even the most
significant information seems boring and wearisome if you do not modulate your
voice and tone to match up the feelings and sentiments associated with the
sentences spoken. Sometimes, the pace with which the speech is delivered or due
to the strange texture of voice of the speaker or due to the technical problems
in the speakers or the mikes, most of the significant aspects of the speech are
missed by the listeners. Appropriate intonation and voice modulation can convey
the gist of what the speaker intends to convey irrespective of the problem the
occasion is troubled with.
10.
End it still holding the attention
Effective
speeches are those which make a positive impact on the listeners’ mood, mind
and attitude. No matter how impressively the speech goes on but without an
appropriate and befitting ending, the effort of the speaker goes in vain. If
giving the gist of the speech and the intention of the speaker is one part of
the conclusion,the other part is using expressions like rhetorical questions
and logical statements connected with the subject of the speech that are moving
and are effective enough to let the listeners get preoccupied with the words of
the speaker until they leave and thereafter as well. If this can happen, then
the motive of the speaker will have achieved.
by Thota Srinivas