If you’re a student or a worker, you will have to master this skill. If you want to perform an actual presentation or just speak in public, it’s important that YOU master this skill. It’s not easy to do so, but there are ways and methods to help you be a good public speaker. I will talk about these methods and support them with a personal story.
Nearly every public speaker gets nervous. It’s in our human nature to do so and that’s a big problem for a public speaker. But the important part in not having the problem, it’s how you solve this problem and overcome your stage fright. Although people have different levels of this fear, they all can overcome this problem with the same methods! Like for example, Obama overcame his fears a long time ago .. He always said that he used to get nervous when doing presentations in college. Being nervous and having a panic attack when doing your presentation is a normal thing that happens to every public speaker. It’s actually a given! If you can feel nervousness, YOU ARE ALIVE!
Now, how can we overcome this fear?! The answer is simple, PRACTICE. When you practice your speech, you will master every aspect of it. You will know when to stop and when to lower your voice. If you make a lot of mistakes, you will notice them in when you practice so that you can solve them before doing the actual presentation. Practicing your presentation is the best way to overcoming your fear. Because when you know what you will say, you limit the number of mistakes in your presentation.
Although practice will help master or at least sketch your presentation, it won’t eliminate your fear or the nervousness that you will feel while doing a presentation.
While doing a presentation or even practicing for one, take a deep breath and think about the audience for a second there! They are people just like you and they will feel the same nervousness that you will feel if they are in your place. Let your brain believe that you are doing a presentation to aliens that can’t feel anything. That way if you stumble or mistake a word, no one will care! Because they are ALIENS! To think about it, does the audience care about your mistakes or even judge you when you make one!? The obvious answer is NO! People will not care about your mistakes. They will not judge you if you mistake the whole presentation or if you stumble while saying a complicated word. They JUST DON’T CARE!!!! So, when you think about how they don’t care about what you will do in the presentation, you will not care about them or their judgment! The whole goal for listening to a speaker is to get entertained, so as a speaker you have to do just that without caring about others judgment!
After joining the American University of Kuwait, I was introduced to the world of public speaking. I never did a presentation (how sad is that) before. 12 years of attending and learning about how we (Muslims) were once rolling the world of science, we never had a presentation! And I think that this is the main problem or reason for this fear that we feel now. We never had to do a presentation and suddenly we have to do one in front of people I don’t know!! That will increase our fear and nervousness!! I’m talking about students from government high schools and not privet. We didn’t know anything about public speaking or how to perform one! At AUK I was asked to do a presentation in my first week. I was nervous and scared, but I didn’t want to think about this fear and just enjoy my time doing something I never did before. That was actually what my teacher (Robert Hobbs) said: “enjoy your presentation. Entertain yourself before entertaining us”. And that’s what I did. My first presentation was a 5 minute presentation about myself. I really didn’t know what to say about myself. I asked the teacher for help!! Hobbs suggested that I should write the whole presentation and then rather than memorizing it, study it. That’s the second method for overcoming your stage fright. Writing you presentation on paper and then adding the main bullet points of your presentation.
I wrote the whole presentation and the main points that I will talk about. After studying and knowing what I’m going to say, I was confidence. This method helped me a lot because it made me realize that a presentation is similar to an essay. When you write an essay, you need certain things that will improve your essay. The same thing goes with a presentation. In an essay, you will begin with the introduction, then the body, and finally the conclusion. In a presentation, you will do the same thing. It will help a lot and even if you didn’t actually say the same thing you wrote, at least you said something!
Public speaking is a fun world, a fun experience, and a fun hobby do master. I would like to be a regular speaker, so that I’m always practicing and improving this skill. In AUK (The American University of Kuwait), I’m sure that I will do many more presentation and I thank them for that. I never knew how to do so and now I’m actually good at it. There is a class here in AUK, an English class which is only about public speaking. English 108. I really recommend taking this subject (I’m taking it this semester). Like my former teacher said: “life is all about having fun with education and the best example is when you do a presentation”.
Bo Ali
