The Art of Public Speaking Chapter 8 Critical Thinking

7.4 Public Speaking and Course Presentations

Learning Objectives

Know how to overcome nervousness and anxiety associated with public speaking and giving class presentations.
Finer use the half-dozen-footstep process to prepare for and deliver a course presentation.
Create constructive visual aids for use in form presentations.
Work with a group to successfully program and evangelize a class presentation.

Public speaking—giving an oral presentation before a class or another group of people—is a special form of interaction common in instruction. You will likely be asked to requite a presentation in 1 of your classes at some point, and your future career may also involve public speaking. It's important to develop skills for this class of communication.

Public speaking is like participating in class—sharing your thoughts, ideas, and questions with others in the group. In other ways, still, public speaking is very unlike. You stand in front of the class to speak, rather than from your usual seat—and for most students, that changes the psychology of the situation. You besides take time outside of class to fix your presentation, allowing you to plan it advisedly—and, for many, giving more than fourth dimension to worry about it and feel even more feet!

Overcoming Anxiety

Although a few people seem to exist natural public speakers, most of u.s. feel some phase fright or anxiety most having to speak to a group, at least at get-go. This is completely normal. We feel like everyone is staring at us and seeing our every flaw, and we're sure we'll forget what we want to say or mess upwardly. Take comfort from knowing that nearly everyone else is dreading giving grade presentations the aforementioned every bit you are! Just you tin learn to overcome your anxiety and prepare in a manner that not only safely gets y'all through the experience but also leads to success in your presentation. The following are proven strategies for overcoming anxiety when speaking in public:

Empathize anxiety. Since stage fear is normal, don't attempt to deny that you're feeling anxious. A little anxiety can help motivate yous to gear up and do your best. Accept this attribute of the process and work to overcome it. Anxiety is usually worst just before you lot begin and but eases upward once yous've begun.
Understand that your audience really wants you to succeed. They're not looking for faults or hoping you'll fail. Other students and your instructors are on your side, not your enemy. They probable won't even encounter your anxiety.
Reduce anxiety by preparing and practicing. The next department discusses the preparation procedure in more detail. The more fully you prepare and the more often y'all have practice, the more your feet will go away.
Focus on what you're saying, not how you're saying it. Keep in listen that you accept ideas to share, and this is what your classmates and instructors are interested in. Don't captivate about speaking, but focus on the content of your presentation. Think, for example, of how easily you lot share your ideas with a friend or family member, as you naturally speak your mind. The same can piece of work with public speaking if you focus on the ideas themselves.
Develop self-confidence. As you gear up, you will brand notes you can refer to during the presentation. You lot're non going to forget what you want to say. The more you practise, the more confident you'll get.

Guidelines for Presentations

Preparing and delivering a presentation in class (or in business or other settings) is a process very similar to the learning process discussed in Chapter iv "Listening, Taking Notes, and Remembering", Chapter 5 "Reading to Learn", and Affiliate half-dozen "Preparing for and Taking Tests" and the writing process discussed in Chapter 8 "Writing for Classes". The process breaks down into these six basic steps:

Analyze your audience and goals
Plan, enquiry, and organize your content
Draft and revise the presentation
Prepare speaking notes
Do the presentation
Deliver the presentation

Pace one: Analyze Your Audience and Goals

Who will run into and hear your presentation—and why? Plainly, other students and the instructor. But you nevertheless need to recollect virtually what they already know, and don't know, well-nigh your topic. If your topic relates to subject area matter in course lectures and readings, consider what background data they already have and be careful not to give a boring recap of things they already know. It may exist important, however, to show how your specific topic fits in with subjects that have been discussed already in grade, especially in the beginning of your presentation, but be sure to focus on your new topic.

New terms and concepts may get familiar to you while doing your research and preparation, simply remember to ascertain and explicate them to other students. Consider how much explanation or examples will be needed for your audience to grasp your points. If your topic involves annihilation controversial or may provoke emotion, consider your audition's attitudes and choose your words carefully. Thinking about your audience will help you find means to go their attention and keep them interested.

Be sure you are clear about the goals for the presentation. Are y'all primarily presenting new data or arguing for a position? Are you giving an overview or a detailed report? Review the assignment and talk with the instructor if you're unsure. Your goals guide everything in the presentation: what you lot say, how much you say, what order you say information technology in, what visual aids you use, whether you use sense of humour or personal examples, and so forth.

Step ii: Plan, Research, and Organize Your Content

Starting with the assignment and your goals, brainstorm your topic. Jot notes on specific topics that seem important. Often you'll practice reading or research to get together more information. Take notes as y'all would with any reading. As yous inquiry the topic at this stage, don't worry at beginning about how much content you are gathering. It's meliorate to know too much and then choice out the most of import things to say than to rush ahead to drafting the presentation so realize yous don't have enough material.

Organizing a presentation is similar to organizing topics in a class paper and uses the same principles. Introduce your topic and state your chief idea (thesis), get into more item about specific ideas, and conclude your presentation. Look for a logical guild for the specifics in the middle. Some topics work all-time in chronological (time) order or with a compare-and-dissimilarity organization. If your goal is to persuade the audience, build up to the strongest reason. Put similar ideas together and add transitions between dissimilar ideas.

While researching your topic and outlining your main points, recollect about visual aids that may aid the presentation.

Also starting time thinking about how much time you accept for the presentation, but don't limit yourself yet in the outline phase.

Step iii: Typhoon and Revise the Presentation

Unless required past the assignment, you don't need to actually write out the presentation in full sentences and paragraphs. How much you write depends on your own learning and speaking style. Some students speak well from brief phrases written in an outline, while other students find it easier to write sentences out completely. In that location's nil wrong with writing the presentation out fully like a script if that helps you be certain you will say what you lot intend to—just then you don't really get upward and read from the script.

Y'all can't know for sure how long a presentation will last until you rehearse it later, simply you can estimate the time while drafting it. On the average, it takes two to iii minutes to speak what can be written on a standard double-spaced folio—but with visual aids, pauses, and audition interaction, information technology may take longer. While this is just a rough guide, y'all can get-go out thinking of a ten-minute presentation equally the equivalent of a three to four-folio paper.

Never wait until the last infinitesimal to typhoon your presentation. Conform your time to set the first draft and and so come back to it a twenty-four hours or two subsequently to ask these questions:

Am I going on besides long well-nigh minor points? Could the audience get bored?
Practise I accept expert explanations and reasons for my main points? Do I need more data or ameliorate examples? Where would visual aids be nigh effective?
Am I using the best words for this topic and this audition? Should I exist more than or less informal in the mode I talk?
Does it all hold together and catamenia well from one point to the next? Do I demand a amend introduction or transition when I shift from 1 idea to another?

Visual Aids in Presentations

Except for very short informal presentations, most presentations proceeds from visuals—and visual aids are often expected. If encouraged or allowed to include visuals in your presentation, program to exercise and then. Consider all possible types:

Charts or graphs
Maps
Photos or other images
Video clips
Handouts (only when necessary—they can be distracting)

Use the bachelor technology, whether it'due south an overhead projector, PowerPoint slides, a flip chart, or posters. (Talk to your teacher most resource and software for designing your visuals.) Follow these guidelines:

Design your visuals advisedly. Here are some basic rules:
- Use a elementary, neutral background. A light-colored background with text in a dark color works best for words; a dark background used like matting works best for photos.
- Minimize the amount of text in visuals—more than eight words per slide is unremarkably besides much. Avert simply presenting word outlines of what you are saying. Make sure text is big enough for the audience to read.
- Don't utilise more than 2 pictures in a slide, and employ two only to make a direct comparison. Montages are difficult to focus on and distract the viewer from what you lot're saying. Employ images only when they support your presentation; don't use clip fine art just as decoration.
- Don't put a table of numbers in a visual help. If you need to illustrate numerical data, use a graph. (Microsoft Excel tin can make them for you lot easily.)
- Don't use audio effects. Employ a very cursory recording simply if straight related to your chief points.
- Don't use visual special effects such equally dissolves, spins, box-outs, or other transitions. They are distracting. Utilize animation sparingly and only if it helps make a point.
Don't use then many visuals or movement through them and then quickly that the audition gives all its attention to them rather than to you.
Practice your presentation using your visual aids, because they affect your timing.
Explain visuals when needed merely not when they're obvious.
Keep your eyes on your audience, simply briefly glancing at visuals to stay in synch with them.
Don't hand out a printout of your visuals. Your audience should continue their optics on you instead of trivial around with newspaper.

Footstep 4: Prepare Speaking Notes

As mentioned before, information technology's non a good idea to read your presentation from a written page rather than deliver it. To keep your audience'south attention, it's important to brand middle contact with them and to use a normal speaking vox—and you tin't do this if you keep your optics on a written script.

Speaking notes are a brief outline for your presentation. Y'all might write them on index cards or sheets of paper. Include of import facts and information likewise every bit keywords for your main ideas, but don't write likewise much. (If you lot forget things later when y'all start practicing, you can always add together more to your outline then.) Be sure to number your cards or pages to prevent a final-minute mix-up.

Remember peculiarly near how to open and close your presentation, because these two moments take the most impact of the whole presentation. Use the opening to capture the audition's attention, simply be sure it is appropriate for your audition and the goals. Here are some possibilities for your opening:

A striking fact or case (illustrating an issue or a trouble)
A cursory interesting or humorous anecdote (historical, personal, or current event)
A question to the audience
An interesting quotation

Then relate the opening to your topic and your principal point and move into the trunk of the presentation.

Your closing mirrors the opening. Transition from your last point to a cursory summary that pulls your ideas together. Yous might end with a challenge to the audition, a strong statement about your topic, or a personal reflection on what you accept been proverb. Simply make sure you accept a concluding sentence planned so that you don't terminate upwards uncomfortably fumbling around at the end ("Well, I guess that ends my presentation").

Step 5: Practice the Presentation

Practice may be the most important pace. Information technology is also the best way to get over stage fearfulness and gain confidence.

Practise first in an empty room where you imagine people sitting, so that you tin can move your eyes around the room to this "audience." The first time through, focus on putting your outlined notes into full sentences in your natural speaking voice. Don't read your notes aloud. Glance downwardly at your notes only briefly and then expect upwardly immediately around the room. Exercise two or three times merely to find the correct words to explicate your points and feel more comfortable working with your notes. Time yourself, just don't captivate over your presentation beingness the exact length required. If your presentation is much too long, however, adjust information technology now in your notes so that yous don't beginning memorizing things that you lot might accidentally however say subsequently on even though you lot cut them from your notes.

In one case you feel good speaking from your notes, practise to add some more polish to your delivery. You might want to record or videotape your presentation or ask a friend or roommate to watch your presentation. Pay attention to these aspects of how yous speak:

Try to speak in your natural voice, not in a monotone every bit if y'all were just reading aloud. If you will be presenting in a big room without a microphone, y'all volition need to speak louder than usual, but even so effort to use a natural voice.
In usual conversation, nosotros speed up and slow downward and vary the intensity of our words to show how we feel virtually what nosotros're proverb. Practice changes in your delivery style to emphasize key points.
Don't go along looking at your notes. Information technology's fine if you use words that are different from those you lot wrote down—the more than yous rehearse without looking at your notes, the more natural sounding y'all will be.
Be certain you tin pronounce all new words and technical terms correctly. Do saying them slowly and clearly to yourself until yous can say them naturally.
Don't forget transitions. Listeners need a cue when you're moving to a new thought. Practice phrases such as "Another of import reason for this is…" or "Now let'due south motion on to why this is and then.…"
Watch out for all those little "filler" words people employ so often, such as "like," "you lot know," "well," and "uh." They're very distracting to most audiences. Heed to or watch your tape to see if yous are using these fillers or ask your friend to point it out.
Pay attention to body language when practicing. Stand up upwardly direct and alpine in every practise session and then that you become used to information technology. Unless you lot take to stand at a podium to use a fixed microphone in your presentation, practice moving around while yous speak; this helps go along the audience watching you. Use hand and arm gestures if they are natural for you, simply don't try to brand up gestures for the presentation because they will await phony. Most of import, go along your optics moving over the audience. Practice grinning and pausing at key points.
Finally, it's a practiced idea to be ready in case of an accident. Nigh likely your presentation will go smoothly, y'all'll stay on track with your notes, and your PowerPoint slides will work fine, but sometimes a mishap happens. Exist gear up to joke about it, rather than condign flustered. If the computer fails and you lose your visuals, say something like, "Well, that'due south a shame, I had some actually great photos to evidence you!" If you drop your index cards or notes, or accidentally skip ahead in your presentation and and so take to backtrack, make a joke: "Pitiful almost that, I was so excited to get to my side by side point that I'g afraid I lost control in that location for a moment!" Allow your audience laugh with you—they'll notwithstanding be on your side, and you tin can defuse the incident and move on without condign more nervous.

Step half-dozen: Evangelize the Presentation

Be sure to get enough sleep and swallow a healthy breakfast. Don't drink as well much caffeine or else you'll go hyper and nervous. Article of clothing your favorite—and advisable—clothing and comfortable shoes.

Figure seven.7

A man presenting on a small tablet

You may use computerized visual aids when you give a presentation to a form.

John Haynes Photography – OLPC – CC By-ND two.0.

Remember, your audience is on your side! If you're still nervous earlier your turn, take a few deep breaths. Rehearse your opening lines in your mind. Smile every bit you lot move to the front of the room, looking at your audition. Y'all'll meet some friendly faces smiling dorsum encouragingly. As yous start the presentation, move your optics among those giving you a warm reception—and if you see some student looking bored or doing something else, simply ignore them. But don't focus on whatsoever ane person in the audience for besides long, which could make them nervous or crusade them to look away.

Don't keep looking at your spotter or a clock: If your rehearsal times were close to your assigned fourth dimension, your presentation will exist also. If you lot exercise observe that you're running behind schedule, information technology may be that you're saying likewise much out of nervousness. Apply your notes to get back on track and keep the pace moving. Only it's better to deliver your presentation naturally and fluidly and exist a chip long or brusk than to endeavour to change your words and stop up sounding unnatural.

At the closing, deliver your last line with confidence, sweeping your eyes over the audience. If appropriate, enquire if there are any questions. When y'all're washed, pause, smile, say "Thanks," and walk dorsum to your seat.

Afterward on, inquire other students and your instructor for comments. Be open minded—don't just ask for praise. If you hear a suggestion for improvement, file that in your memory for next fourth dimension.

Group Presentations

You may be assigned to give a presentation in a small group. The 6-step process discussed previously works for group presentations, too, although group dynamics often phone call for additional planning and shared responsibilities:

Schedule a group coming together as presently equally possible to get started. Don't permit another pupil put things off. Explicate that y'all're too busy and won't take time at the last minute.
Begin past analyzing your audience and your goals together as a grouping to make sure anybody understands the assignment the same. Discuss who should do what. While anybody should talk about what content to include, from hither onward, you will have on specialized roles. 1 or more may begin inquiry and gathering information. Others who are good writers may volunteer to draft the presentation, while one or more others may develop the visual aids. Those who accept public speaking feel may volunteer to do all or most of the speaking (unless the assignment requires anybody to have a speaking office). You lot as well demand a team leader to keep anybody on schedule, organize meetings, and so on. The best squad leader is an even-tempered student with skillful social skills, who can motivate everyone to cooperate.
Steps 2 and 3 can likely be carried out individually with assigned tasks, but group members should stay in touch. For example, the person developing the visuals should be talking to those doing the researching and drafting to see what visuals are needed and become started finding or creating them.
Before preparing notes in pace 4, meet again to go over the content and plan for visuals. Everyone should exist comfortable with the plan and then far. Brand final decisions about who will practise each department of the presentation. Gear up the time for each segment. And then speakers should gear up their own speaking notes. Let someone with strong speaking skills open up or close the presentation (or both), with others doing the other parts.
The whole grouping should exist present for practice sessions in stride five, even if non everyone is speaking. Those not speaking should take notes and give feedback. If one educatee is doing most of the presenting, an alternate should be chosen in example the first choice is ill on the scheduled day. The alternate also needs to practise.
During the delivery, especially if using technology for visual aids, one educatee should manage the visuals while others do the presenting. If several students present unlike segments, program the transition from i to some other then that the presentation keeps flowing without pauses.

Boosted Resource

For Class Presentations

Using PowerPoint. A step-by-step illustrated tutorial for learning how to create constructive visual presentations with PowerPoint. https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/tutorials/powerpoint/

"How to Give a Bad Talk." A humorous look (with some very good advice) on what not to exercise when preparing for and giving a class presentation. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pattrsn/talks/BadTalk.pdf

Course presentations on YouTube. Search YouTube with the phrase "class presentation" and look for video examples of actual students giving class presentations. Observing and critiquing the presentations of other students are skillful ways to go started preparing your own and learning from others. Here'southward a good instance of a student group presentation on a topic we can all relate to (how body linguistic communication works):

In this presentation, take note of

how students make skilful eye contact with the audience;
the starting time student'due south natural speaking voice and tone, and how she did not accept to utilize her notation cards very often (evidently she practiced well);
some differences among these students;
the use of PowerPoint slides within the presentation (some better than others);
the appropriate occasional use of humor;
the division of presentation responsibilities within the student grouping;
each presenter'south interaction with the audience.

Central Takeaways

Public speaking skills are of import considering you will likely give presentations in grade and mayhap in a futurity job.
Overcome feet well-nigh public speaking past understanding your feelings, preparing well and practicing your commitment, and focusing on your subject.
Follow a half-dozen-step process to fix and evangelize a presentation:
1. Analyze your audition and goals
2. Programme, research, and organize your content
3. Draft and revise the presentation
4. Set speaking notes
5. Practice the presentation
6. Deliver the presentation and seek feedback
Use visual aids to support a presentation, creating visuals that are relevant, attractive, and powerful.
The success of a group presentation depends on effective grouping meetings, successful segmentation of roles, and repeated group practices.

Checkpoint Exercises

If you have given a course presentation in the past, what worked best for you? (If you lot accept not given a presentation still as a student, what attribute practice you think will be near difficult for you lot?)

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Proper noun the two well-nigh important things you can do to reduce anxiety near a grade presentation you volition have to give.

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For each of the post-obit statements about class presentations, circle T for true or F for false:

T	F	Although you are delivering the presentation to the grade, your real audience is your instructor, so you don't need to waste time defining terms and concepts he or she already knows.
T	F	Organizing a presentation or speech is like to organizing topics in a paper you write for class.
T	F	When creating visual aids, put as many photos as you tin can in each PowerPoint slide to take the strongest impact.
T	F	In case your memory goes bare while giving a presentation, write the total presentation out so that you tin can read it aloud.

Describe how best to utilize body linguistic communication (facial expressions, eye movements, gestures, etc.) when giving a presentation.

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If you were assigned along with iii other students to give a grouping presentation in the class using this textbook, what would be your preferred role in the grooming stages? Your to the lowest degree preferred role? If yous had to accept your least preferred role, what single thing would you lot want to work hardest on to make the presentation successful?

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Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/collegesuccess/chapter/7-4-public-speaking-and-class-presentations/