Snakes? Fine. Flying? No problem. Public speaking? Yikes!
Just thinking about public speaking — routinely described as one of the greatest (and most common) fears — can make your palms sweat. But there are many ways to tackle this anxiety and learn to deliver a memorable speech.
Here Are My 10 Tips for Public Speaking:
1. Nervousness Is Normal. Practice and Prepare!
All people feel some physiological reactions like pounding hearts and trembling hands. Do not associate these feelings with the sense that you will perform poorly or make a fool of yourself. Some nerves are good. The adrenaline rush that makes you sweat also makes you more alert and ready to give your best performance.
The best way to overcome anxiety is to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. Take the time to go over your notes several times. Once you have become comfortable with the material, practice — a lot. Videotape yourself, or get a friend to critique your performance.
2. Know Your Audience. Your Speech Is About Them, Not You.
Before you begin to craft your message, consider who the message is intended for. Learn as much about your listeners as you can. This will help you determine your choice of words, level of information, organization pattern, and motivational statement.
3. Organize Your Material in the Most Effective Manner to Attain Your Purpose.
Create the framework for your speech. Write down the topic, general purpose, specific purpose, central idea, and main points. Make sure to grab the audience’s attention in the first 30 seconds.
4. Watch for Feedback and Adapt to It.
Keep the focus on the audience. Gauge their reactions, adjust your message, and stay flexible. Delivering a canned speech will guarantee that you lose the attention of or confuse even the most devoted listeners.
5. Let Your Personality Come Through.
Be yourself, don’t become a talking head — in any type of communication. You will establish better credibility if your personality shines through, and your audience will trust what you have to say if they can see you as a real person.
6. Use Humor, Tell Stories, and Use Effective Language.
Inject a funny anecdote in your presentation, and you will certainly grab your audience’s attention. Audiences generally like a personal touch in a speech. A story can provide that.
7. Don’t Read Unless You Have to. Work from an Outline.
Reading from a script or slide fractures the interpersonal connection. By maintaining eye contact with the audience, you keep the focus on yourself and your message. A brief outline can serve to jog your memory and keep you on task.
8. Use Your Voice and Hands Effectively. Omit Nervous Gestures.
Nonverbal communication carries most of the message. Good delivery does not call attention to itself, but instead conveys the speaker’s ideas clearly and without distraction.
9. Grab Attention at the Beginning, and Close with a Dynamic End.
Do you enjoy hearing a speech start with “Today I’m going to talk to you about X”? Most people don’t. Instead, use a startling statistic, an interesting anecdote, or concise quotation. Conclude your speech with a summary and a strong statement that your audience is sure to remember.
10. Use Audiovisual Aids Wisely.
Too many can break the direct connection to the audience, so use them sparingly. They should enhance or clarify your content, or capture and maintain your audience’s attention.
Practice Does Not Make Perfect
Good communication is never perfect, and nobody expects you to be perfect. However, putting in the requisite time to prepare will help you deliver a better speech. You may not be able to shake your nerves entirely, but you can learn to minimize them.
Every so often, you might be called upon to speak about a topic. Be prepared! Look over the attached list of topics and get a feel for what you might say if asked.
English is a world-wide language that people use to communicate with one another. In fact, 96 countries use English in varying degrees.
What can I do to be more fluent in English
Many who want to learn to speak fluent English have asked this question. It is certainly possible to work towards improving the ability to communicate effortlessly. Learning a language is a process of exploration loaded with fun.
Top tips to make your language richer
1. Find friends who want to speak in English:
If you are surrounded by English speaking people day after day, will it improve your spoken English? The answer is yes! That’s what an environment of English does. The more your exposure to the language, the more you will be able to absorb. If you find friends who want to learn English too, you will learn from each other. Soon, you will be looking for new sentence structures and vocabulary to convey your ideas. Say, for example, if you and a friend decide to work together on how to ask for directions, both of you will learn new vocabulary on how to ask for directions in English. More importantly, both of you will practice the language together and listen to each other speaking. This will be helpful as communication is a two-way process. You have to listen to the language and speak it. It will always be useful to practice both the parts together.
2. Read aloud to yourself:
In order to tell yourself that you can speak the language well, you have to hear yourself speak first! A very good way of doing this is by reading aloud. Read English from books, magazines and newspapers to yourself. This might sound like something primary school children would do, but it works. You can pick up the day’s newspaper and read the news articles that catch your attention. Sports lovers can go straight to the sports pages and start reading an article on their favorite sport. It will definitely retain interest while keeping you updated on the latest happenings in the world of your favorites.
Reading loudly to yourself for ten minutes every day will convince you that you can speak fluent English! This feeling will continue even when you try to speak with another person. When you read out the language, you will also be exposed to the new structures and vocabulary that you read. These will gently make way into your own language.
3. Listen to the language:
Listening and comprehending is key to developing your ability in English. Subscribe to podcasts and audio books to practice the receptive skill of listening. Listening is an effective method of exposing yourself to correct pronunciation. It also helps you understand the stress and intonation in words and sentences. Audio books are available for most of the content available in the market. The best part about listening to an audio book or podcast is that you only need your cell phone for it. You can download the book on your cell phone and listen to it anytime you want. This can be especially useful when you are travelling to and from work. Since communication is a two-way process, one needs to listen and understand before one speaks.
Many available podcasts are not only informative but also educative. You can choose from a wide variety available today on every topic under the Sun. The basis of your choice can be topics which interest you. Ask a sports fan to speak on sports, and he will be able to speak for hours on the topic! If you pick topics which interest you, you will stay interested.
4. Maintain a vocabulary book:
How do you increase your vocabulary and retain new words learned? You can do this by maintaining a record of any new words you come across. Enter them into a vocabulary book. Note down the word, its meaning and its use in a sentence. Flip through this book often, and you will find yourself using those words while speaking. Look for new words that you can use to express yourself. Target using a few of those words every day and watch your vocabulary expand.
Unquestionably, there are many words we use every day whose meaning we are unsure of. It will benefit you to look up some of these words in the dictionary. Then, note down these words in the vocabulary book as well. This book will serve as your own, personal dictionary. Use it to help find a place to save a word you come across. A hand-written vocabulary book will always mean much more to you. Because you will have slowly filled it in word-by-word with words that you had a need to use or understand.
5. Practice the skill of summarizing:
Stating the main ideas of a given passage or paragraph is known as summarising. What has been read is a great way of producing original and creative language. After reading a chapter of a book or listening to a podcast, note down the main ideas from the piece. Summarize it in a pre-decided number of sentences. Challenge yourself by increasing or decreasing the number of sentences you can use for the summary. Then, speak out these sentences by elaborating upon the main ideas. When you try to talk about what you have read in your own words, you will be making your own sentences. This will also get you to look for new ways to express a certain idea, which will go a long way in helping build your ability to express yourself.
Do this activity with an equally interested learner and give each other feedback on it later. When you give feedback to each other, you will be able to observe and learn from the errors of the other person. This will work towards improving your own power of expression. You can do this by speaking aloud to yourself as well.
6. Explore language-learning apps:
Language-learning apps are a great way to practice English when you are on the move. Download an app from a reliable source and use it while travelling. You will make good use of your time to learn language while building your skills. Many of these apps explain the use of certain words and phrases and then ask you to make sentences around them. They also give real-time situations where you would need to know the language in certain role-plays or activities. Use them to build your accuracy while working on your power of expression to convey ideas. These apps also have interactive video and audio clips which help to build interest. The colorful interface makes it eye-catching which makes the user come back for more.
7. Record your voice:
Listening to yourself speak is a fabulous way of correcting your pronunciation and reviewing your language. Give yourself a topic and speak extempore for two minutes. Record yourself when you speak and play it back to yourself. You will be able to identify pronunciation errors and evaluate your language. Hence, which can go a long way in figuring out your areas of strength. You will also be able to understand the areas you need to work on more. Start this by first reading out articles from newspapers or books and recording them. When you get comfortable with listening to your own voice, you can start speaking on a topic you choose. Pick a variety of topics for this activity- ranging from the exciting to the boring. Sometimes, it is fun to pick up a topic which does not interest you at all. When you record your speech on such a topic, you will observe changes in intonation and speed of speech based on your interest in the topic!
8. Read a book:
What kind of stories do you prefer? Do you like adventure or suspense? Comedy or horror? There are books available on every genre. If you pick up a book that interests you, you will find that you are able to learn the language and engage yourself in an area of significance. Books can be very interesting if you like what you are reading. While reading, you will come across some new words which you can make a note of in your vocabulary book. The good part about learning new words while reading is that you can see the word being used in a sentence, which helps you understand the usage of that word. While reading, one tends to learn English without consciously trying. Take, for example, a suspense novel. When you are deeply involved in the plot of a story, the only thing that will interest you is what happens next. This is the most natural way to learn a language, so start reading a book and watch your vocabulary grow.
9. Watch television shows in English:
Watching shows will not only make you listen to the correct pronunciation of words but also will make you aware of the ways each word in a sentence is pronounced in a natural setting. Language is the most useful when its usage is understood in the correct context. The advantage of watching a show is that you also get a video that you can watch, and this helps to retain interest. The only challenge in watching a show in English is, people often select watching the sub-titles of the part. If a person is reading the subtitles while watching a video, he is not practicing the skill of listening anymore. He is practicing the skill of reading. In a nutshell, it is important to keep the subtitles off while watching your favorite show in English as this will not help you in developing your skills of listening. Try to watch English shows which have more neutral accents so that you don’t have to struggle too much to understand the accent. If you struggle, turn sub-titles back on.
10. Keep a time to study English:
Keeping a regular time every day for English studies will help you in ensuring that you are working every day towards your language goal. Consistency is a very important factor in making sure that you are working on a regular basis to improve your language. You can fix days on which you will work on different elements of the language, like adding more words to your vocabulary book or learning to use a new tense. When you make a schedule for such activities, you will make sure that all parts of English are developing at the same time. This will help you in developing all the skills of the language together. Doing this will also build your confidence in using the language as you will keep learning new concepts and vocabulary which you can then use in your language. When you use a new tense you have learned, it will also make you want to learn of the other tenses and the times that you can use them. There are so many different concepts in a language that you will always be left with a curiosity to learn more. That will keep you motivated enough to keep looking for new ways to develop your English-speaking skills.
Learning English is a journey
It gets more interesting with each passing milestone. There are always different concepts to master, new vocabulary to learn, expressive sentence structures to be used and creative ways to express yourself. Today, there are so many innovative ways to learn the language. These new ways ensure that you are always using your imagination and developing innovative ways to learn. Make the path in this journey an experience you enjoy. When you look forward to finding different ways to express yourself, you will be filled with a sense of achievement. This sense will motivate you in moving forward. Also, it will help you in looking for new heights which you can reach in your language goals. Explore different ways of acquiring English and the different methods to expose yourself to correct language!
This lesson is perfect for those people who want to improve their English pronunciation and fluency. This is very important if you struggle to lessen any accent you may have and become more understandable when speaking English.
You have no problem practicing your English reading, writing, or listening skills when you’re alone, but when it comes to practicing speaking, what are you supposed to do?
You need to practice peaking
Everyone says that you have to practice speaking in order to improve, and that reading, writing, and listening are not enough. But it’s not always possible to find an English teacher or friend to speak with, right? Are you supposed to talk to yourself?
Yes! And it’s not as weird as you think! It might feel strange at first, but the more you do it, the more natural and fun it will become.
Besides, it’s not just about talking to yourself. It’s about finding creative ways to speak when you’re alone.
Teach yourself a speech or monologue
You need to practice speaking, but if you don’t know what to talk about, memorizing something. It’s a great place to start. It allows you to get more comfortable with hearing yourself speak in English. Also strengthens your pronunciation muscles!
So, to begin, you should find your favorite scene from a movie or play and memorize it. Or a joke from your favorite stand-up comedian. I promise this can be a really entertaining way to spend your time.
If this sounds overwhelming, take it step by step. Choose a short passage to memorize, maybe a few hundred words. Read the passage and underline or highlight any phrases or expressions you don’t know. Look them up and practice using them in sentences so you can get comfortable using them.
Then, take the monologue or speech and break it down into small sections. Start with memorizing just a few sentences at a time. Subsequently moving on to lengthier material.
Memorize your favorite quotes to repeat out loud
If you’ve spent any time on social media, you know that quotes are an incredible way to connect with and inspire people instantly. And, if you don’t feel ready to memorize a speech yet, you should start with memorizing quotes.
The great thing about this strategy is that, if you check social media every day, you can make this part of your daily habit. It can also expose you to expressions and slang that you might not find in other places.
If you need ideas, just search for #inspirationalquotes on Instagram. Also search Google for quotes about a particular subject, like self-care or perseverance.
In the beginning, I recommend that you give yourself a small goal of learning one quote per week. Then repeat it to yourself or to friends and family, over and over, until they say, “Please find a new quote!”
Memorize your favorite song and sing it!
Many of my students laugh at me when I ask them if they’ve ever tried singing in English, but there’s a method to my madness! In a 2013 study conducted at the Reid School of Music in Edinburgh, researchers discovered that adults who sang in a new language instead of just speaking it performed better on a series of language tests.
I understand that people don’t like to sing, or they feel self-conscious about their ability, but if you’re by yourself, you should give it a try! And you’ll find that, because you’re singing it, it will be much easier to memorize a song than it is to memorize a monologue or famous speech.
Easy one first
For your first song, try not to choose something that’s too challenging or fast-paced, but do choose a song that you really enjoy so that you’ll want to listen to it again and again.
Listen to the song first as you read the lyrics and look up any words or phrases you don’t know. Then, play the song again, and try singing along as you read the lyrics. Do this a couple of times until you feel ready to start singing the chorus – or the part of the song repeated after each verse – without reading the lyrics.
Once you’ve memorized the chorus, work on the first verse. Take the song one verse at a time until you know it by heart (without reading the lyrics).
Then, sing it all the time: in the shower, in the car, in the supermarket when no one’s around. Sing it until you’re sick of it, and you’re ready for a new song.
If you need inspiration, I highly recommend choosing a song from The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Eagles, or Prince. These are just a few examples of musicians who have been around for a long time, but who are still popular and who have really influenced modern culture.
