good public speaking

Presentation “world” will always have something to do with public speaking. If you want to be an expert presenter, or at least be a good and effective presenter, you need to have public speaking technique.

The main ability you must have to master public speaking is of course communication ability or the ability to speak. It means that you can speak clearly and intelligible.

So, it is important to have a good vocal ability. Vocal ability here means the ability to speak with precise volume and clear articulation. Volume and articulation are factors that make your voice can be heard clearly by the audience.

If the audience cannot hear your voice clearly, their attention to your presentation decreases. It could make your presentation less interesting. Besides, there are other things that support your public speaking, such as gestures, material and tools you use. The most important thing of all is self confidence. There are some ways you should do to improve your public speaking.

1. Improving your self confidence

There are some things that make your voice indistinct, and a lack of confidence is one of them. You can’t rely on a microphone to throw your voice – you need to do that yourself. Feeling nervous or anxious will prevent you from doing this, as will self-consciousness.

Nervousness can lessen your voice. You become shaky, and it affects your voice volume. To increase the power of your voice, you have to have faith in yourself.

You have to believe in yourself that you can give the best. To improve your self-confidence, you can practice delivering a speech in front of your relatives or friends. Make sure you’re also wearing comfortable clothes, and make time in the morning to look your best. If there’s a part of you that you’re particularly self-conscious of, take steps to lessen their impact on you. If you’re conscious of your hands, for example, hold on to something to stop them from moving around. Similarly, if you’re conscious of your teeth, visit a Herndon dentists or similar dentist closer to you to get them professionally cleaned and polished. They’ll also be able to straighten your teeth over time, so if you have to present often, straightening your teeth might be worth investing some time in.

2. Improving your voice

When you are speaking in front of public, you must control your voice power. Someone’s voice power will be worse if he does not use chest and belt voice properly. Belt voice is produced by pressing an abdomen, not a neck. If you use belt voice, your voice will sound more clear and good. This voice could be trained by practicing breathing technique. Practice your breathing regularly by taking breath using diaphragm. If you are used to breathing this way, you will have a good belt voice.

Besides, you should also notice voice resonance. Resonance is a factor that can strengthen your voice. This resonance technique can be trained by closing your mouth, then saying “Hmmmmmmm” using your chest voice. After doing so, try to speak by combining your chest and belt voices. You can practice also by reading loudly. When you can read loudly, although sometimes you make mistakes, you have enough resources to speak in front of public. Practicing reading loudly can make you learn how to articulate words properly.

3. Practicing by telling stories to children

Reading tales to children can help improving your public speaking skill. Telling tales needs some sort of skill in order to make the story more amusing to children. When telling tales, you need volume, good articulation and rhythm that suits to the story. Sometimes, you have to whisper, sometimes you have to scream while telling tales to children. You have to express the emotion that the characters show in the story. It will be useful for you when you deliver a presentation. In front of the audience, playing voice volume and rhythm are required when you deliver a speech. Sometimes, you have to speak slowly, but sometimes fast, suit to the material you deliver in your presentation.

4. Watching presentation videos

There are many presentation videos shared freely in the internet. You can watch them on TED.com. There you can learn how presenters in the whole world deliver their presentations. Chose a suitable presenter and then learn his/her style in delivering presentations. Notice and learn the gesture he/she uses when speaking in front of public. Notice also the material he/she deliver and how he/she deliver it. After that, adjust his/her style to you style and personality. Don’t force to use another people’s style if it doesn’t suit you.

Besides doing things above, you can also ask for help from professionals or attend presentation or public speaking workshops. By practicing to deliver presentation or public speaking, you will find the proper way to improve your skill.

Do you want to be a good speaker and to impress your audiences at the same time? Well, there is no shortcut for such things. You have to practice and practice industriously and learn from the experts and also explore your speaking ability in every occasion.

Here are some tips you can practice in everyday life.

Learning by observing

The easiest thing for you to learn is observing how good presenters perform. You can learn from TED videos that you can watch for free. For instance, you can learn by watching global or local TED like TED Jakarta.

Besides TED, you can also watch Pecha Kucha videos. There is something interesting while you watch Pecha Kutcha videos. Each video shows a presenter performs 20 slides which every slide switches every 20 seconds automatically. Each presenter must make sure that his presentation corresponds to every change of the slides.

Learning by Practicing Together

You can also improve your speaking skill by following Toastmaster club near your place. Toastmaster is a non-profit organization that helps people to improve their speaking skill. You can learn further about it in this article.

Learning by Following Training Class

Besides doing autodidact learning from videos, observing other speakers or joining speaking club, you can also learn by joining training.

The advantage of joining training is that you will be managed to improve your presentation skill, from formulating your presentation’s material, transforming it to visual slides in instantly and delivering your presentation convincingly.

Now let us go back to our topic, how to baa good speaker.

1. Deliver a Story

A good presentation doesn’t only give facts and data but also wraps it with good story to make your presentation understandable.

2. Know Your Audiences

Knowing your audience is imperative. You will deliver a presentation to them so you must know who will attend to your presentation. You must know their position in their company. By this way, you will be well connected to them

3. Visualize What You Deliver

Delivering a good presentation needs a skill to elaborate complex idea into an intelligible visualization. That’s why besides you must learn how to speak understandable language, visual slides also help you to perfect your presentation.

4. Speak Naturally

A good speaker doesn’t pretend to be anybody else. He just becomes the way he is. By speaking with your own style, your audiences will see you as a confident speaker because you are the way you aye and not being exaggerate on everything.

5. Perform with Confidence

Show yourself! Deliver your ideas! Don’t hide behind your slides! Use a clicker to help you move from one slide to another easily.

6. Do an Eye Contact

Among many tips to perform in front of audience, eye contact is one of the most important things. Eye contact shows that you care. It is a prime stage to create connection between the speaker and the audience.

7. Don’t Do a Blocking towards Your Audience

It’s a sin if you do this thing: block the audience. Don’t block your audience even though your presentation is over. Can you imagine what you feel when someone is not facing towards you while you have conversation with him? You will feel that you are abandoned. That is exactly what the audience feels. That is why don’t make a long and gobbledygook slides. Instead, you make visual slides which are more interesting and evoking the audiences.

8. Don’t apologize

Apologizing is a good thing. But apologizing to the audience as an excuse of your imperfect presentation is bad because it just shows that you are not a credible presenter. So, make sure you avoid such thing!

You are a star in your presentation. You are the one who manage the scenario of your presentation. So, take control!

Improving Your Public Speaking Ability