Question

I. Answer the following questions by providing detailed information about each.

2. Discuss five techniques needed to become a more confident speaker? (25 marks) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Answer 1

Public speaking is a skill that is required in many fields of life. It increases the confidence of the speaker and also creates many opportunities. But most people suffer from nervousness when it comes to speaking in front of a live audience. These techniques can be kept in mind to overcome the varioaus issues that arise for people during public speaking and become a more confident speaker.

• Know your Content-

The first thing to be done is selecting a topic. Selecting a topic that is known by the speaker can help a lot. If not known, researching the topic and reading and noting the important points should be done. Reading blogs or listening to others speaking on the topic can help in gaining different perspectives on the topic. This makes the speaker more comfortable with the topic.

• Plan-

Planning is a must for almost everything in life. Here, in the case of speaking, planning helps create a framework for the ideas and gathered information, giving a direction to the speech. The topic must be the only way this speech should be directed in. An important thing to be noted here can be creating an introduction to the topic while planning as it can make the audience either more attentive or just ignore the speech. Panning can help in ordering subtopics and adding or removing information if required. It also makes the speaker more confident as he or she is more prepared for the speech and questions from the audience that can follow.

• Be yourself-

Being you is important while speaking. Trying to act like some great public speaker seen on internet or TV can make the speaker seem more mechanised and this can detach him or her from the public, making the public less interested. This can then harm the speaker by making him/her feel like they're doing something wrong and hence decreasing their confidence. On the other hand being you while planning and speaking can make the audience more interested as they can see your real personality which is more like them and the can relate to the speaker.

• Know your Audience-

​​​​​​​Knowing the audience can get the speaker easy plus points and boost their confidence. While speaking, if the speaker judges the way his audience reacts to his humor or allegations or ways of presenting some topic, he or she can evaluate and rearrange his pre-panned speech in a way that the audience gets more interested in and attentive to the speech. Engaging the audience can get the speaker feel more comfortable and less isolated.

• Practice-

​​​​​​​At last, Practice is the key. To be a confident speaker, one must practice and evaluate oneself and then practice again. Practicing before a speech can help the speaker self-evaluate and improve the speech greatly. Recording oneself then watching the video helps a lot too. In the end, speaking publically needs practice and in order to practice, one must speak publically again and again.

These techniques if kept in mind and followed can make a speaker more confident in speaking publically with practice.