Public Speaking Tips for Students

When you look at leaders like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton delivering speeches, you are simply amazed by their public speaking skills. What is it about these men, which makes people listen to them in rapt attention? Surely, it cannot be their authority which makes people intimidated enough to listen to them! I feel that it is their ability to connect with people, their ability to involve them, or make them feel important, through their communication and body language, which gets them the desired attention. Of course, their confidence, positive attitude and dressing sense, makes a lot of difference too.

When it comes to learning public speaking techniques, the earlier one starts, the better. That's why we have public speaking classes, an important part of the curriculum, right from schools to colleges. In these classes, while delivering speeches, students often feel nervous and jittery and are not able to create the required impact. If you are one of those who is all sweats and panics in front of an audience and needs some advice to sail through smoothly, given below are some useful tips, which are sure to help you out.

Effective Tips for Mastering Public Speaking

Quality Content
No matter how great a speaker you are, if the content of the speech is not properly organized or is inadequate, either ways it is going to backfire! To start with, make sure that you know exactly what message you want to convey through your speech, what kind of audience you are going to speak in front of, and then write the speech content accordingly. The speech should follow a logical sequence and should never ever seem haphazard. One story should lead to another and so on. As far as possible, avoid abrupt starting and endings of sub-topics in between the speech.

Spicy Content
Once you have the basic assignment material ready, you need to spice it up a bit with stories, anecdotes, any funny experiences, which contribute in bringing forth the points of the speech in an interesting manner. If you lack in this department, take help from your parents or friends or elder siblings!

Practice
One of the most important tips for high school students, is to practice it as many times as you can. A good idea, here, is to stand in front of the mirror and rehearse it while watching yourself. This will help you to develop an appropriate body language, while delivering a speech.

Become Familiar
Many a time, it is seen that students become very jittery while speaking in front of others. A good idea is to go to the hall where you have to give the speech, one hour earlier than the scheduled time and become familiar with the surroundings. If possible, rehearse the whole speech along with the visual aids you are using, so that you are at ease.

Handouts
One of the main reasons that audience remains uninvolved in speeches is that it is busy jotting down the important points. In order to get full attention of the audience, tell them at the beginning of the speech that they will be getting handouts, which outline your entire speech, in the end.

Voice Modulation
Voice modulation is very important. If you give the speech in the same tone, the audience will find it very monotonous and boring. If there are some important points in your speech, stress more on them. If you are about to share an interesting experience, take a pause and tell it, as if you are telling a story. On the whole, make sure that there is clarity in your voice and your speech is audible, by delivering it loudly and at the same time, slowly.

Hide Your Nervousness
Perhaps, the most important aspect of public speaking tips for kids, college students or even professionals, is to keep your nervousness and anxieties, well hidden from the audience. The great speakers that you see around, that you feel are very confident, might be actually faking confidence! Whether you are confident from within or are pretending to be confidence, the audience cannot tell the difference. So just fake it, plaster a smile on your face and carry on!

Dos and Don'ts of Public Speaking

• First very important thing to do is, to choose your speech topic very carefully. Ideally, select a topic which interests you and on which you have some previous knowledge.
• Be well-dressed. As everybody knows, first impressions count a lot.
• When delivering a speech, make sure that you maintain eye contact with the entire audience. Do not just look in one direction. Instead, look at different people at different times during your speech. This is a great way to involve the audience in your speech
• Do not read out your speech word by word. If possible, memorize it and do away with the written material completely.
• If quoting someone, or reading out a statistics, make sure to mention the source.
• When giving examples and stories, make sure that you include those which the audience can relate to.
• It is seen that visual aids such as power-point presentations, interest and appeal to the audience a lot, so use them creatively to enhance the effectiveness of your speech.
• Do not make the speech too lengthy. Keep it short, crisp and interesting.

Here's hoping that these tips, will better equip you the next time you are on a stage to address an audience. In the end, it is practice, experience, patience and your ability to stay calm, which will improve your speaking skills, so inculcate all these and soon you will find the audience applauding and cheering for you! Best of Luck!