Mastering Public Speaking Techniques

Aloha. Today we're going to talk about chapters 12 and 14, planning, public speaking, and organizing, and presenting public speeches. Now, first thing we're going to take a look at here is choosing a topic, okay? Because obviously you got to have a topic, you need to have something to talk about. So choosing a topic is very important. But the first place to start with choosing a topic is with you. Don't jump on the internet, don't open up a book, don't look anyplace else. Think about something that matters to you. and let that be your topic. In this class, you're going to have a lot of speeches to give, and I'm going to let you choose the topic. I will give you the theme of the speech, but you will choose the topic. Choose something that's appropriate for the occasion, appropriate to your audience, which in this case will be your fellow classmates, and then try to narrow that topic and get as much as you can from that particular subject. One way you might want to do that is through a little technique that's called mind tap. Now in your text, mind tap is referred to as basically a free association of ideas that's connected to a central theme. So in this case, we're talking about the environment. So you would take the environment as your central theme, and you would begin to just kind of freely associate all the different ideas and thoughts and suggestions and experiences you've had regarding the environment. And then you would just very simply map it out. You would draw connecting lines and see how that connects back to the environment. And then with each topic or each subtopic that you select, you're going to, again, create more connecting lines like here, the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer. This is the atmosphere. Also with water, you could talk about the environment and water. And then what are some of the connecting ideas that go along with water? like pollution and flooding and safe drinking water and all those kinds of things. What that will do is that it will give you a really great overview of the number of topics that you can tie back into the environment, but then narrow it down to just one topic. So let's say you want to talk about the environment, but the most significant thing about that is safe drinking water. So that's what you want to do. You want to talk about safe drinking water. You want to conduct your research. I know many of you are very familiar with... conducting research online and conducting research offline so i'm not going to beat a dead horse about that one but of course conducting research online you can do that via google you can you can get into the uh the university's library system conduct online research there there's also offline research that you think that you can conduct um you can use newspapers magazines you can do interviews you can talk to people and um Primary research. Now here is a form of research that involves information that does not already exist. So this would be primary research because you are the one that are going to have to go out and get the information that you need. So you're going to set up a system, you're going to identify resources where you can go and you can talk about, or you can interview someone who has some information about your topic. Let's say, for instance, you want to talk about the environment, okay, since we've already had that slated up. There are a number of places that you could call. You could talk to various community organizations. You could talk to, like, the Sierra Club, the conservation associations that are out there. There's a number of people, a number of places. You can even go out and talk to students. You can conduct your own research. Talk to students. Talk to family. Talk to friends. Talk to strangers. What do they think about, for instance? Clean drinking water. How important is that? Okay. So you can, again, primary research, because you don't have the information, doesn't mean you don't have access to it. You have to go out and get it. Personal observation and research. It matters. How you observe the world matters. Okay. You can use that as part of your report. Say, hey, you know, I noticed this and that. I noticed that the water quality in this part of town is not as great. But then you have to substantiate that. Like you have to. enforce that claim. You have to defend that claim. You could go and talk to the Department of Water Supply, for instance, and sort of get some information from them about what's in our drinking water, what's in our tap water. Informal surveys, you go out, again, you talk to people, you survey them. You can do interviews. You can talk to experts in the field, get their opinion about the water quality around the Big Island. Now there are different ways that you can support your information. One way is to define what it is that you want to talk about. Definitions. Definitions are very simply explanations of what something means. What a concept, what a stimulus, what does something mean? A definition is simply that. It's a definition. If you want to find out what a particular word means, you look in a dictionary, right? And that's what you want to do here. If there's something you're not sure about in your research, look it up. Or if you want to come at it from a definition point of view, you could do your actual presentation defining all the issues and all the problems and all the situations that are present in safe drinking water. Statistics. Statistics are facts that are expressed in numerical form. Instead of saying, well, you know, a lot of counties or rather a lot of towns around the Big Island have poor drinking water. Some have pretty good drinking water and some have excellent drinking water. Well, that kind of gives the idea that there's some bad water and there's some good water. But to use statistics is to break down those what we call qualitative information, the word information, like plenty towns get bad drinking water. A few have good drinking water. Let's break it down. Let's give it a number. So let's say 40% of the towns on the Big Island have poor quality drinking water. right? 30% of the towns have pretty good drinking water and 30% have excellent drinking water, okay? So that breaks it down, makes it a lot easier for us to understand when information is presented in a numerical form. So you can use examples and illustrations. Examples are representative cases. In other words, an example is an example, right? One thing stands for something else. If you were asked to do a mathematical problem in class and you didn't know how to do it, you said to the teacher, can you show us an example? And he or she writes the example on the board. Bingo, you have your example. Okay, it's the same thing. Illustrations. Illustrations are stories. They're narrative pictures. Illustrations are great because what you do is when you share a story with someone, you're more apt to keep them interested, to draw them into your presentation. Because people, by and large, love stories. We are storytellers. We tell stories. We've told stories from the dawn of time. Every culture has some form of storytelling that they engage in. So stories are a great way to paint those pictures in people's heads of what you're trying to say. You know, in fact, we love stories so much, sometimes we'll pay like, you know, 10, 11 bucks to go watch a movie. That's what a movie is, right? It's a story. You pay money, you go in, you watch a story. Except nowadays, maybe you might stay home and watch a story. It might be a little safer. But we love stories. We absolutely do. So that's a great way to present. And then a testimony. Testimonies are someone else's opinions or conclusions. So if you're conducting, let's say, an informal survey and someone says, well, you know, I think the best water on the Big Island is right here in Hilo. Well, you say, well. What makes you say that? Well, because I've kind of drank all the different waters from around town and, I mean, around the island. And I think Helos is the best. Well, that's their opinion. That's their conclusion. That's their testimony. Can you use someone else's testimony in your presentation? Absolutely. You can use someone else's testimony in your presentation. As long as you make it clear that this is a person's own opinion and it is not a fact. Okay? You know what they say, you're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. OK, so sometimes you want to compare and contrast items. Right. Comparison stress similarities while contrast stresses differences. For instance, if we're talking about apples and oranges. Right. We can compare an apple and an orange. We can say, well, they're both fruits. You can make juice with them. They both grow on trees. So that's a comparison. Right. Contrast. However, on the other hand, we could take an apple and orange. We could say, well, they're different colors. They have different textures. They taste different. They grow in different kinds of trees. So depending on the point you want to make, you may want to compare or you may want to contrast your information or your presentation. Repetition and restatement, very simply, when you repeat something over and over again, there's more of a tendency for people to remember. The key point that you're trying to make, one of the most famous repetition speeches is Martin Luther King's, I have a dream. Because he consistently uses the phrase, I have a dream, I have a dream, I have a dream. And he uses that strategically throughout his speech. So that today, when we think about Martin Luther King, we think about I have a dream. Or if we think about I have a dream, we think about Martin Luther King. Now, if we were to very simply say, I mean, if Martin Luther King were very simply to have said, I have a dream. one time in that speech, he may not have been remembered for that particular speech, right? So in his case, repeating was a device that he could use. Repetition was a device he could use to make his point and make it very memorable. Restatement very simply is restating something, saying one thing in a different way. For instance, the sky is blue, or the sky is clear, or the sky is beautiful, right? Again, repetition of the same words, repeat of verbatim, meaning exactly the same way, and then restatement. Those are ideas presented again, but in different words. Now, when you outline your speech, you need to outline your speech using a framework, much like how you use when you write an English paper. So you should have taken English 100 or you should already be enrolled in English 100 this semester. Because... when you're writing a paper they talk about the same thing the principle of redundancy you have to make sure that your work supports your work as you're progressing from the beginning to the body to the conclusion so the principle of redundancy is based on tell them what you are going to tell them okay i'm going to tell you about the need for us to have clean drinking water And then you tell them, this is why we need to have clean drinking water. And then you lay out your argument. And then finally, you tell them what you told them. I just told you about clean drinking water, why it's necessary. And again, to summarize, this is why we need clean drinking water. Okay? So that's building your framework and outlining your speech. Now... Oftentimes, when you begin your speech, you need to pull the audience in. In fact, almost every time, okay, unless you're one of those really gifted orators or you have an incredible reputation that precedes you, you need to have some sort of attention getter that will pull the audience into your presentation. Attention getters are what you start your speech off with. And I will look for attention getters in your presentation. I want you to make sure you include these attention getters at the beginning to pull your audience in. Now, examples of attention getters could be, you could relate an unusual fact. For instance, do you know that in the United States, there are more plastic flamingos than there are real flamingos? Did you know that? Well, I mean, not that it's important or not, that it's going to change in the course of world history. But that's kind of an unusual fact. Or do you know that more people have a blue toothbrush than a red toothbrush? Yep, that's true. Go look it up. In fact, go look at your own toothbrush. What color is it? You can make a surprising statement. Well, we know surprising statements are very effective. Because a couple of years ago, there was one that was made that caught everyone's attention. And it looked something like, uh-oh, where did it go? okay sorry it looked like this right remember that yeah where were you when this happened maybe you weren't even on this island but definitely that was something that caught our attention okay so let me backtrack you can cite shocking statistics like many of us know about the fact that the one percent in the world controls 95 of the wealth right i mean For a lot of people, that's like kind of mind-blowing. Really? Really? That's a lot of resources that a few people have. You could ask a question, just a simple question. For instance, how many of you have ever eaten lemon, lime, jello, and mountain oysters together at the same time? And if you don't know what mountain oysters are, you might want to go look it up. Okay? You can tell a suspenseful or a human interest story. These kinds of stories really tug at people's hearts. A few years ago, there were some young boys who were trapped in a cave. I believe it was in Thailand. That became such an international story. It was an incredible story that everyone just kind of gravitated toward, and everybody rooted for the kids to get them out of there. You could tie that into your... your presentation, some sort of suspenseful or human-intuitive story. And then finally, use some humor. Tell a joke, okay? Or use a funny story that you have. But I have to caution you, if you cannot tell a funny story, if you cannot tell a joke, then don't do it, okay? It's not going to work. If it falls flat, then you're going to be in a rut, okay? So if you got a really funny story, a really, really cute story, or a really great story that people will hook into, Go ahead. Start with that. I've got a few of my own, but for the sake of time, I'm going to just move on. OK, so here's that message again. Whoa. OK, so another thing I'd like to talk about are presentation aids. We use presentation aids to illustrate our speech. Now, presentation aids facilitate communication of highly technical information. Presentation aids are very simply anything that you need to help accompany you throughout your presentation. Okay, that's all it is. So it can be a PowerPoint, it can be a video, it can be things that you bring to class, it can be something you have on. Okay, but these are different types of presentation aids. Again, one, it helps to facilitate communication of highly technical information. Some things you might want to talk about. might require more of a visual presentation to go along with your all presentation to help the class understand better. You know the old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words, yeah? It also serves to highlight or add emphasis to one or more point. It can increase the listener's motivation if it's something that they really find themselves locked into. You'll tend to keep their attention much longer, or maybe even throughout your whole presentation. And it helps to generate... more interest. So if it's a topic, let's say, again, if it's the need for clean water and you live in a community where clean water is a problem, your presentation might generate interest within people in that community. You might be invited to go out to the community to speak about it or to start some kind of social movement to get this going, right? You never know where this is going to lead to. It can also help to enhance recall. So sometimes people may not relate to a particular... phrase or sentence that you're talking about, but they may relate to an object or an image. Yeah. So these are very, very important ways of helping to recall your speech. There are different types of visual aids that you can use. Okay. Objects and models. Objects are very simply that they're objects. Okay. They're the thing that it is. For instance, this is a pair of eyeglasses, right? You can see that pair of eyeglasses. So If I wanted to talk about how poor my eyesight is, I might bring in my eyeglasses because this is an object that relates to this. However, some objects are too big to bring to class. So you can make a model of it. For instance, if you want to talk about your the really hot car that you have, for instance. OK, but you can't bring your car into the classroom. Well, certainly you can bring a model of it. Right. To kind of illustrate what it is that you want to talk to us about. It just makes it a lot easier again to. pull the audience into your speech when you've got something else more than just your voice trying to communicate or trying to convince them that what you have to say is important. There are types of visual aids that we use also. There are graphs, photographs, drawings, there's computer graphics. Some of the guidelines for using these visual aids, keep it simple. A lot of times you go and do all this fancy stuff and... You know, we just need to keep it really simple, okay? You don't need to have all the flash and all the lights and all that stuff. Keep it simple. Make sure it's clear. Make sure what you put on the screen, we can see, okay? Make sure that if you have to move it up to your camera to make it obvious, then you do that. Move it back so that we know that what you're talking about is actually what it is that you're sharing with the class. Make sure it's visible. Okay, so even if, let's say even the text on your screen, make sure those are large enough so we can see when you're presenting. Make sure the images you have are large enough and very, very visible. Okay. And you want to make sure that it's authentic. Whatever items that you have, whatever illustrations you're going to bring in, make sure that it's relevant to the particular topic that you're talking about. And that gives your topic more authenticity. Now, other types of aids, we have audio aids and that would be like, you know, gee, what kind of audio aids do we have? We have like tapes or we have CDs or we have maybe various audio recordings, things like that. We have computer assisted presentations such as PowerPoints and Prezi. Some of you might use Prezi and that's fine. There's also slideshows. Some people run a slideshow in the background while they're giving their presentation. I'm not sure how well that works in Zoom, but in a normal face-to-face that's something that would be an advantage for students. But you can always try it before you present it. Okay, just real quickly to go over a few of the types of graphs that we talked about. In this case, you can see here, this is a pie graph. This is a very common type of graph. This particular graph shows how workplace diversity has changed in the last 10 years. Is it more diverse? Is it less diverse? And you can see just by the wedge, the size of the wedge itself, even without the numbers, it will indicate, okay, workplaces have become more diverse. and in some workplaces, 5% of the workplaces say it's become less diverse. Okay, so pie graphs are real quick snapshot of what it is that you're trying to explain or what it is that you want to clarify in your presentation. Bar graphs, okay, bar graphs are another type of graph that you can use. Bar graphs are usually used to compare quantities. Okay, in this case, we have some inventory of apples, oranges, bananas, apricots, and watermelon. Just looking at this, you know, you can say to yourself, okay, the one fruit we have the most of is what? Yeah, oranges, right? The one that we have the least of is apples. So let's say we have about maybe 27 apples, 28 apples. I mean, I'm sorry, 27 to 28 oranges. And then we have about maybe 22 and a half, 23 apples. Well, you can't have a half an apple. That's kind of gross. but 22 apples. Okay, so this is how you use a biograph to compare qualities. A drawing. Sometimes, especially if you're giving an extemporaneous speech, you may decide, hey, I want to draw something up for the class and I want to show it to them. Okay, so a drawing might work really well because it's something you can compose in an instant at the moment and you can share. Now, a lot of athletic teams for instance like basketball and baseball, football, they'll use drawings to illustrate what it is what people's responsibilities are and especially in basketball if you've got you know two seconds left on the clock and you have the last shot well the coach is going to draw up a play he's going to draw up a play and say you go here you go there you do this you pass the ball you shoot okay so drawings can be essential in creating some sort of success in your presentations now this is very important Okay, you really need to know this because there are four general styles of delivery available. The first style is manuscript. The manuscript is read from a script. Okay, very simply, you write it and you present it word for word. You do not deviate from the script. Okay, it's a manuscript speech, write it and deliver it. Now, one of the pluses of a manuscript speech is you've got everything right there in front of you, right? You you have an opportunity to practice it one of the great One of the great advantage is you can time your speech So if you have to do a three-minute speech, then you can write your speech you can accommodate the three-minute time limit So there's some definite advantages to a manuscript speech on the other hand one of one of the The negative parts of delivering a manuscript speech is you can lose your place, right? That's one thing people oftentimes worry about. Or you could misread a word and create a whole different meaning to your presentation or that particular sentence or whatever the idea is that you're trying to get across. Okay, the kinds of people that tend to use manuscript speeches a lot are politicians and broadcasters. Memorized speech. Now, this is a manuscript that you write out and you actually commit the speech to memory. You will not have to give a memorized speech. in this class, okay? No memorized speeches. You don't have to commit it to memory, okay? Now, what's the good thing about a manuscript speech? Well, I mean a memorized speech. One of the good things is that you can maintain more connection with your audience. Yeah. If you're really good, if you really memorize the speech well, you can maintain the eye-to-eye contact, which sometimes you don't see in manuscript speeches. Okay. Manuscript speeches might tend to kind of pull your eyes to the paper rather than to the audience. Memorized speeches give you that ability. What's the negative about a memorized speech? Obviously, you could forget it, right? And if you forget it, well, plan B. And if you have no plan B, well, I don't know what to say. So that's right. We won't do memorized speeches. Don't worry about that. And then we have impromptu speeches. These are speeches that are delivered spontaneously on the spur of the moment. We will have these. We'll do a few of these, okay? An impromptu speech is very simply, I give you a topic and you talk about it for a minute. Okay? It's that simple. Now, what's the good thing about an impromptu speech? Well, you don't have to do any preparation, really. It's just right off the top of your head, which might be an advantage, might not be an advantage. Okay? And for some people, the disadvantage is not knowing what they're going to talk about ahead of time, right? But impromptu speeches really end up being the fun speeches that we do. And it really gives you an opportunity to sharpen your ability. to think on your feet, to come up with something. In an impromptu speech in class, you take it wherever you want to go. However you interpret the prompt, whether it's a question or a phrase or a sentence or a word, you take it wherever you want to go. And we're going to do that in the next couple of sessions. Extemporaneous speech, this is the type of speech that is most effective when delivering a presentation. An extemporaneous speech is researched, it's outlined, and it's delivered after careful rehearsal. Now, you're not going to rehearse the speech word for word because this is not a manuscript speech. You're going to have note cards or you're going to have an outline that you're going to use. You're going to bring that up with you. All you're going to have on the outline or the note cards are the essential points of your presentation. Everything else will be up here. So you're going to sequentially list the things that are important, and you're going to talk about it based on the information you have up here relative to what it says on your outline. Okay, wording your speech. It's very important that you speak in short units. Okay, don't go on and on and on. Avoid using jargon or technical language. And by this, we mean language or words that might be familiar to you, but not everybody else. You might use a certain kind of language or certain phrases. at work and if you want to talk about something at your work then you have to define what those words and or phrases are or else interpret them so we can understand them or don't use them at all. Keep your words simple, concrete, appropriate, and vivid. You don't have to use a 25 cent word when a five cent word will do. Okay make sure that the words that you use are exactly what you're trying to say. Okay if you're trying to say to us that something is yellow then make sure it's not green, okay? Because then there'll be some confusion. So yellow matches with the yellow thing you're talking about. Use appropriate language. No cussing, no swearing, profanity. That's out in your presentations, okay? And try to keep your speeches as vivid as you can because what you have to do in the course of presenting your speech is to create the images for your audience. It's not just sharing words. It's sharing a story. It's sharing a part of yourself. So using clear and vivid language might seem something like this. The water was dirty. What kind of water am I talking about? Go ahead. Yep, I'm talking about dirty water. But what if I said to you the water, oops, sorry. What if I said to you the water appeared murky and undrinkable? That gives you kind of a different idea of what kind of dirty water I'm talking about, right? It's murky, it's undrinkable. Who wants to drink that? Well, if you have to, you would drink that. Believe me, I've been in situations where I've had to drink murky and undrinkable water. Oh, but it's good when that's all you have. Eliminate confusing words or expressions, such as the salt water was as salty as a salt lake block. Well, what the hell does that mean? It simply means that the water was extremely salty. So just say it was extremely salty. We don't need to know that it was as salty as a Salt Lake block. I mean, first of all, you got to know what a Salt Lake block is, right? So those of you that do, then okay, you know what it means. Those of you that don't are like, gee, I don't know what that means. Okay, but the water was extremely salty says to us that the water was extremely salty. Okay, good one. Use transitions. Transitions are very important. For instance, the water appeared murky and undrinkable, unlike the tall glass of clear water, clear fresh water sitting on the table. Fresh water is an important source of life for many creatures. So initially we're talking about water that appeared murky and undrinkable, right? But we want to now take the audience from murky, undrinkable water to clean, clear, fresh water. And how do we do that? We have to transition. We have to transition from murky and undrinkable to clear and fresh. And how do we get there? Okay, the word unlike takes us to the next part of our presentation. And once we establish that what we're going to talk about is not like what we've already talked about, then we can begin to talk about fresh water as an important source of life for many creatures. Okay? Now, let's talk a little bit about communication apprehensions, because for some of you, it's there. Okay? There's some degree of anxiety about communicating. It can be helpful, because it's natural for us to feel that. It is natural for us to feel anxious. about getting up in front of the public and saying something. What anxiety can do is it can help to boost our energy. If we take that energy and we channel it back into our presentation, rather than ourselves, if we take it from our head and we move it to the podium, we can find that we can use that energy to help us with a much stronger and a much more significant presentation. Now, one thing we know about anxiety is that anxiety is energy. It's energy. It's built up energy, right? And we know that energy cannot be destroyed, but we also know that energy can be transferred. So the idea is to take this energy that we have, this anxiety, and to transfer it into our presentation so we can come out being and feeling more confident about what we did. It's not that we're never not going to be anxious. We will, okay? You know, you might from speech to speech experience that. But too much anxiety can limit our effectiveness. It can interfere. It can be the noise that we talked about, the noise that gets in the way. So some causes of apprehension, some are chronic, meaning that it's always there. Some people are very anxiety prone. They're anxious in a number of situations. A lot of us these days. especially in this particular situation that we're in now with this pandemic, a lot of us have experienced anxiety in ways that we haven't experienced it before. Okay, so when we experience it that way, it can be chronic, it could be something that comes up all the time. Yeah. Or it can be situational, meaning that depending on the situation, it could arise. You could speak to a small group of about 10 people and you don't feel anxious at all. But get up in front of a group of 100 people, then that anxiety begins to well up in you. And then again, it could become something that could be debilitating in your presentation. But there are a number of factors that we have to deal with that we can take a look at to help resolve this situation. First of all, it could be that we are unfamiliar with the audience. with the people to whom we are presenting. So it's important for us to get to know the audience. Yeah, get to know the audience, get to know the people. The more information we have about where we're going to be and who's going to be there, what it's going to be about, the less anxious we're going to be because we're going to have taken care of all those questions that we've had. Sometimes being in an unfamiliar situation will also create the kind of anxiety. that could interfere with our presentation. So become familiar with the situation. Know what the situation is. Know why you're getting yourself into this. Have the expectations that you're going to be familiar with the situation, be familiar with the audience, and you're going to come out on top of this. Being in the spotlight. When you're giving a presentation, you are it. All eyes are focused on you. And a lot of people feel very, very, very uncomfortable. comfortable with that. They don't like being in the spotlight because all of a sudden they become aware of a flaw they might have. Maybe their hair is out of place. Yeah, maybe they got something stuck in their tooth or whatever. Or just having people's eyes on you might make you feel uncomfortable. You know, I was an entertainer most of my life, and I'm used to being on stage. I'm used to being in the spotlight on stage in a crowd. But sometimes getting up to give a speech, I hit that anxiety wall also. Yeah, and being in the spotlight in that case can work against me. We don't like being evaluated. We don't want people to say, well, that was a good speech. That wasn't a good speech. In this class, I'm the only one who's going to evaluate you. In fact, it's not even an evaluation. It's just a report on how you did in your presentation. Okay? Nobody else will evaluate you. You can evaluate yourself, but I'll give you a report. You can take a look at it. I'll tell you what worked and what you need to work on very simply. Okay? And you might think, you know, I failed at this in the past. What makes me think? it's not going to happen again? Well, because it's not the past. Okay. You know, the best advice that we can give one another is we don't live in the past. We don't. And for some of us, it's hard to break out of that past because the past is the only frame of reference we have. But what we have to do is say, you know what? This is now. Okay. So we've got to live in the now. We've got to present in the now. And we've got to project ourselves to be successful in what. we do and how we present and nobody's gonna laugh at you nobody's gonna say oh that was that was a shitty speech or whatever yeah i'm sorry that was a junk speech or whatever yeah everybody in this class is a support to you and that's why i require all students to be in class on the days of presentation okay or their points deducted for your absence All right, so we can manage apprehension by understanding that some anxiety is natural and helpful. We can use positive self-talk, okay? That's one way that we can do it. We can convince ourselves. We can talk to ourselves. We can be kind to ourselves, yeah? We can be empathetic with ourselves. We can say, yeah, I know this is happening. I know I'm feeling this, but it's okay. This is part of the experience. This is okay. If you know you're going to get up there and you know you're going to be anxious while you're speaking, acknowledge it. Okay? That's the first step to dealing with it. Acknowledge it. You might be anxious all through your speech, but acknowledging that apprehension or anxiety will help you to focus a little more on what it is you have to say. Okay? And again, using that positive self-talk, build yourself up. Okay? Practice your breath, breathing. Okay? Take deep breaths. relax, deep breaths, relax. You know, there is actual scientific research that defines how the mind works and how the physiological aspect of our body functions when we get into an anxious state. And that breathing is probably the most significant way to deal with anxiety. And I'm not going to do the whole scientific research with you. but there was a really interesting one that came out from Stanford University in 2017. If you want you can just google Stanford University 2017 anxiety and breath response and you'll find something there. Okay now here's some final tips for giving a speech. Okay arrive early. If you're the first in the class to give your speech don't come in five minutes late. come in before class starts okay if you're doing a group group presentation don't have your group there one minute before class it's not enough time get there early practice with equipment do you have a computer powerpoints that you have to put together and you have to show it to the audience whatever whatever any kind of audio visual equipment or any other type of equipment that you're going to need make sure you have it ready make sure you have an exact location where you need where you need it so you can just grab it and move on okay Consider your clothing and appearance. Make sure that what you wear is appropriate for the type of speech you're giving and the audience to whom you're giving it. You're not going to wear tank tops and board shorts to go give a speech to the Rotary Club. OK, you're going to wear a nice dress shirt or a nice dress and slacks, shoes. But you might wear board shorts and tank tops if you're going to do some sort of presentation at Honolii because they have some sort of surf competition. OK. So make sure your clothing, your appearance is appropriate. Walk confidently, okay? You got to feel confident. And that's one of the hardest things for us to do when we're feeling anxious is to feel confident. Yeah. So we need to put ourselves into a mindset where we say, you know, I got this. I got this. I can be confident about this. Even though I'm anxious, I can do this. You know, it's your presentation. You put it together. That's the most important thing in the room right now is when you get up, all eyes are focused on you. And you know what? You worked on it. You have a message, blow them out of the water. Give them your message. Do not walk up there and say, oh, I think these bugs are on junk. I don't want to hear that. I do not want to hear that. Okay? It's your work. Be proud. Show it off. Okay? Be confident. Transmit enthusiasm and commitment. They say form follows function, which basically means if you do something long enough, often enough, you'll feel it or you'll believe it or you'll become it. Yeah? So practice that. And then always complete your speech before going back to your seat. Do not just simply, I'm at the end of my speech, you walk away and you're saying goodbye to the audience as you're walking away. No. Start your speech at the podium or wherever you're going to start it, end it there, and then turn and leave the audience. For one thing, it's very rude and disrespectful to do that. And the other thing is, it doesn't give the audience a sense that you have great confidence in what you just told them because you just want to get out of there. Okay. So in a nutshell, this is your presentation on chapter.

Because obviously you got to have a topic, you need to have something to talk about. So choosing a topic is very important. But the first place to start with choosing a topic is with you. Don't jump on the internet, don't open up a book, don't look anyplace else. Think about something that matters to you.

and let that be your topic. In this class, you're going to have a lot of speeches to give, and I'm going to let you choose the topic. I will give you the theme of the speech, but you will choose the topic. Choose something that's appropriate for the occasion, appropriate to your audience, which in this case will be your fellow classmates, and then try to narrow that topic and get as much as you can from that particular subject. One way you might want to do that is through a little technique that's called mind tap.

Now in your text, mind tap is referred to as basically a free association of ideas that's connected to a central theme. So in this case, we're talking about the environment. So you would take the environment as your central theme, and you would begin to just kind of freely associate all the different ideas and thoughts and suggestions and experiences you've had regarding the environment. And then you would just very simply map it out.

You would draw connecting lines and see how that connects back to the environment. And then with each topic or each subtopic that you select, you're going to, again, create more connecting lines like here, the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer. This is the atmosphere.

Also with water, you could talk about the environment and water. And then what are some of the connecting ideas that go along with water? like pollution and flooding and safe drinking water and all those kinds of things.

What that will do is that it will give you a really great overview of the number of topics that you can tie back into the environment, but then narrow it down to just one topic. So let's say you want to talk about the environment, but the most significant thing about that is safe drinking water. So that's what you want to do.

You want to talk about safe drinking water. You want to conduct your research. I know many of you are very familiar with...

conducting research online and conducting research offline so i'm not going to beat a dead horse about that one but of course conducting research online you can do that via google you can you can get into the uh the university's library system conduct online research there there's also offline research that you think that you can conduct um you can use newspapers magazines you can do interviews you can talk to people and um Primary research. Now here is a form of research that involves information that does not already exist. So this would be primary research because you are the one that are going to have to go out and get the information that you need. So you're going to set up a system, you're going to identify resources where you can go and you can talk about, or you can interview someone who has some information about your topic. Let's say, for instance, you want to talk about the environment, okay, since we've already had that slated up.

There are a number of places that you could call. You could talk to various community organizations. You could talk to, like, the Sierra Club, the conservation associations that are out there. There's a number of people, a number of places. You can even go out and talk to students.

You can conduct your own research. Talk to students. Talk to family.

Talk to friends. Talk to strangers. What do they think about, for instance?

Clean drinking water. How important is that? Okay. So you can, again, primary research, because you don't have the information, doesn't mean you don't have access to it.

You have to go out and get it. Personal observation and research. It matters.

How you observe the world matters. Okay. You can use that as part of your report.

Say, hey, you know, I noticed this and that. I noticed that the water quality in this part of town is not as great. But then you have to substantiate that. Like you have to. enforce that claim.

You have to defend that claim. You could go and talk to the Department of Water Supply, for instance, and sort of get some information from them about what's in our drinking water, what's in our tap water. Informal surveys, you go out, again, you talk to people, you survey them. You can do interviews. You can talk to experts in the field, get their opinion about the water quality around the Big Island.

Now there are different ways that you can support your information. One way is to define what it is that you want to talk about. Definitions.

Definitions are very simply explanations of what something means. What a concept, what a stimulus, what does something mean? A definition is simply that.

It's a definition. If you want to find out what a particular word means, you look in a dictionary, right? And that's what you want to do here. If there's something you're not sure about in your research, look it up. Or if you want to come at it from a definition point of view, you could do your actual presentation defining all the issues and all the problems and all the situations that are present in safe drinking water.

Statistics. Statistics are facts that are expressed in numerical form. Instead of saying, well, you know, a lot of counties or rather a lot of towns around the Big Island have poor drinking water.

Some have pretty good drinking water and some have excellent drinking water. Well, that kind of gives the idea that there's some bad water and there's some good water. But to use statistics is to break down those what we call qualitative information, the word information, like plenty towns get bad drinking water.

A few have good drinking water. Let's break it down. Let's give it a number.

So let's say 40% of the towns on the Big Island have poor quality drinking water. right? 30% of the towns have pretty good drinking water and 30% have excellent drinking water, okay? So that breaks it down, makes it a lot easier for us to understand when information is presented in a numerical form. So you can use examples and illustrations.

Examples are representative cases. In other words, an example is an example, right? One thing stands for something else. If you were asked to do a mathematical problem in class and you didn't know how to do it, you said to the teacher, can you show us an example?

And he or she writes the example on the board. Bingo, you have your example. Okay, it's the same thing. Illustrations.

Illustrations are stories. They're narrative pictures. Illustrations are great because what you do is when you share a story with someone, you're more apt to keep them interested, to draw them into your presentation. Because people, by and large, love stories. We are storytellers.

We tell stories. We've told stories from the dawn of time. Every culture has some form of storytelling that they engage in. So stories are a great way to paint those pictures in people's heads of what you're trying to say.

You know, in fact, we love stories so much, sometimes we'll pay like, you know, 10, 11 bucks to go watch a movie. That's what a movie is, right? It's a story. You pay money, you go in, you watch a story.

Except nowadays, maybe you might stay home and watch a story. It might be a little safer. But we love stories. We absolutely do.

So that's a great way to present. And then a testimony. Testimonies are someone else's opinions or conclusions. So if you're conducting, let's say, an informal survey and someone says, well, you know, I think the best water on the Big Island is right here in Hilo. Well, you say, well.

What makes you say that? Well, because I've kind of drank all the different waters from around town and, I mean, around the island. And I think Helos is the best.

Well, that's their opinion. That's their conclusion. That's their testimony.

Can you use someone else's testimony in your presentation? Absolutely. You can use someone else's testimony in your presentation. As long as you make it clear that this is a person's own opinion and it is not a fact.

Okay? You know what they say, you're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. OK, so sometimes you want to compare and contrast items.

Right. Comparison stress similarities while contrast stresses differences. For instance, if we're talking about apples and oranges.

Right. We can compare an apple and an orange. We can say, well, they're both fruits.

You can make juice with them. They both grow on trees. So that's a comparison. Right. Contrast.

However, on the other hand, we could take an apple and orange. We could say, well, they're different colors. They have different textures. They taste different. They grow in different kinds of trees.

So depending on the point you want to make, you may want to compare or you may want to contrast your information or your presentation. Repetition and restatement, very simply, when you repeat something over and over again, there's more of a tendency for people to remember. The key point that you're trying to make, one of the most famous repetition speeches is Martin Luther King's, I have a dream.

Because he consistently uses the phrase, I have a dream, I have a dream, I have a dream. And he uses that strategically throughout his speech. So that today, when we think about Martin Luther King, we think about I have a dream.

Or if we think about I have a dream, we think about Martin Luther King. Now, if we were to very simply say, I mean, if Martin Luther King were very simply to have said, I have a dream. one time in that speech, he may not have been remembered for that particular speech, right?

So in his case, repeating was a device that he could use. Repetition was a device he could use to make his point and make it very memorable. Restatement very simply is restating something, saying one thing in a different way.

For instance, the sky is blue, or the sky is clear, or the sky is beautiful, right? Again, repetition of the same words, repeat of verbatim, meaning exactly the same way, and then restatement. Those are ideas presented again, but in different words.

Now, when you outline your speech, you need to outline your speech using a framework, much like how you use when you write an English paper. So you should have taken English 100 or you should already be enrolled in English 100 this semester. Because... when you're writing a paper they talk about the same thing the principle of redundancy you have to make sure that your work supports your work as you're progressing from the beginning to the body to the conclusion so the principle of redundancy is based on tell them what you are going to tell them okay i'm going to tell you about the need for us to have clean drinking water And then you tell them, this is why we need to have clean drinking water.

And then you lay out your argument. And then finally, you tell them what you told them. I just told you about clean drinking water, why it's necessary. And again, to summarize, this is why we need clean drinking water. Okay?

So that's building your framework and outlining your speech. Now... Oftentimes, when you begin your speech, you need to pull the audience in. In fact, almost every time, okay, unless you're one of those really gifted orators or you have an incredible reputation that precedes you, you need to have some sort of attention getter that will pull the audience into your presentation.

Attention getters are what you start your speech off with. And I will look for attention getters in your presentation. I want you to make sure you include these attention getters at the beginning to pull your audience in.

Now, examples of attention getters could be, you could relate an unusual fact. For instance, do you know that in the United States, there are more plastic flamingos than there are real flamingos? Did you know that? Well, I mean, not that it's important or not, that it's going to change in the course of world history. But that's kind of an unusual fact.

Or do you know that more people have a blue toothbrush than a red toothbrush? Yep, that's true. Go look it up. In fact, go look at your own toothbrush. What color is it?

You can make a surprising statement. Well, we know surprising statements are very effective. Because a couple of years ago, there was one that was made that caught everyone's attention. And it looked something like, uh-oh, where did it go? okay sorry it looked like this right remember that yeah where were you when this happened maybe you weren't even on this island but definitely that was something that caught our attention okay so let me backtrack you can cite shocking statistics like many of us know about the fact that the one percent in the world controls 95 of the wealth right i mean For a lot of people, that's like kind of mind-blowing.

Really? Really? That's a lot of resources that a few people have. You could ask a question, just a simple question. For instance, how many of you have ever eaten lemon, lime, jello, and mountain oysters together at the same time?

And if you don't know what mountain oysters are, you might want to go look it up. Okay? You can tell a suspenseful or a human interest story. These kinds of stories really tug at people's hearts.

A few years ago, there were some young boys who were trapped in a cave. I believe it was in Thailand. That became such an international story. It was an incredible story that everyone just kind of gravitated toward, and everybody rooted for the kids to get them out of there.

You could tie that into your... your presentation, some sort of suspenseful or human-intuitive story. And then finally, use some humor.

Tell a joke, okay? Or use a funny story that you have. But I have to caution you, if you cannot tell a funny story, if you cannot tell a joke, then don't do it, okay?

It's not going to work. If it falls flat, then you're going to be in a rut, okay? So if you got a really funny story, a really, really cute story, or a really great story that people will hook into, Go ahead. Start with that. I've got a few of my own, but for the sake of time, I'm going to just move on.

OK, so here's that message again. Whoa. OK, so another thing I'd like to talk about are presentation aids.

We use presentation aids to illustrate our speech. Now, presentation aids facilitate communication of highly technical information. Presentation aids are very simply anything that you need to help accompany you throughout your presentation. Okay, that's all it is. So it can be a PowerPoint, it can be a video, it can be things that you bring to class, it can be something you have on.

Okay, but these are different types of presentation aids. Again, one, it helps to facilitate communication of highly technical information. Some things you might want to talk about. might require more of a visual presentation to go along with your all presentation to help the class understand better. You know the old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words, yeah?

It also serves to highlight or add emphasis to one or more point. It can increase the listener's motivation if it's something that they really find themselves locked into. You'll tend to keep their attention much longer, or maybe even throughout your whole presentation.

And it helps to generate... more interest. So if it's a topic, let's say, again, if it's the need for clean water and you live in a community where clean water is a problem, your presentation might generate interest within people in that community. You might be invited to go out to the community to speak about it or to start some kind of social movement to get this going, right? You never know where this is going to lead to.

It can also help to enhance recall. So sometimes people may not relate to a particular... phrase or sentence that you're talking about, but they may relate to an object or an image. Yeah. So these are very, very important ways of helping to recall your speech.

There are different types of visual aids that you can use. Okay. Objects and models.

Objects are very simply that they're objects. Okay. They're the thing that it is.

For instance, this is a pair of eyeglasses, right? You can see that pair of eyeglasses. So If I wanted to talk about how poor my eyesight is, I might bring in my eyeglasses because this is an object that relates to this. However, some objects are too big to bring to class.

So you can make a model of it. For instance, if you want to talk about your the really hot car that you have, for instance. OK, but you can't bring your car into the classroom.

Well, certainly you can bring a model of it. Right. To kind of illustrate what it is that you want to talk to us about.

It just makes it a lot easier again to. pull the audience into your speech when you've got something else more than just your voice trying to communicate or trying to convince them that what you have to say is important. There are types of visual aids that we use also. There are graphs, photographs, drawings, there's computer graphics. Some of the guidelines for using these visual aids, keep it simple.

A lot of times you go and do all this fancy stuff and... You know, we just need to keep it really simple, okay? You don't need to have all the flash and all the lights and all that stuff. Keep it simple. Make sure it's clear.

Make sure what you put on the screen, we can see, okay? Make sure that if you have to move it up to your camera to make it obvious, then you do that. Move it back so that we know that what you're talking about is actually what it is that you're sharing with the class.

Make sure it's visible. Okay, so even if, let's say even the text on your screen, make sure those are large enough so we can see when you're presenting. Make sure the images you have are large enough and very, very visible.

Okay. And you want to make sure that it's authentic. Whatever items that you have, whatever illustrations you're going to bring in, make sure that it's relevant to the particular topic that you're talking about. And that gives your topic more authenticity. Now, other types of aids, we have audio aids and that would be like, you know, gee, what kind of audio aids do we have?

We have like tapes or we have CDs or we have maybe various audio recordings, things like that. We have computer assisted presentations such as PowerPoints and Prezi. Some of you might use Prezi and that's fine. There's also slideshows. Some people run a slideshow in the background while they're giving their presentation.

I'm not sure how well that works in Zoom, but in a normal face-to-face that's something that would be an advantage for students. But you can always try it before you present it. Okay, just real quickly to go over a few of the types of graphs that we talked about. In this case, you can see here, this is a pie graph. This is a very common type of graph.

This particular graph shows how workplace diversity has changed in the last 10 years. Is it more diverse? Is it less diverse?

And you can see just by the wedge, the size of the wedge itself, even without the numbers, it will indicate, okay, workplaces have become more diverse. and in some workplaces, 5% of the workplaces say it's become less diverse. Okay, so pie graphs are real quick snapshot of what it is that you're trying to explain or what it is that you want to clarify in your presentation.

Bar graphs, okay, bar graphs are another type of graph that you can use. Bar graphs are usually used to compare quantities. Okay, in this case, we have some inventory of apples, oranges, bananas, apricots, and watermelon.

Just looking at this, you know, you can say to yourself, okay, the one fruit we have the most of is what? Yeah, oranges, right? The one that we have the least of is apples.

So let's say we have about maybe 27 apples, 28 apples. I mean, I'm sorry, 27 to 28 oranges. And then we have about maybe 22 and a half, 23 apples.

Well, you can't have a half an apple. That's kind of gross. but 22 apples. Okay, so this is how you use a biograph to compare qualities. A drawing.

Sometimes, especially if you're giving an extemporaneous speech, you may decide, hey, I want to draw something up for the class and I want to show it to them. Okay, so a drawing might work really well because it's something you can compose in an instant at the moment and you can share. Now, a lot of athletic teams for instance like basketball and baseball, football, they'll use drawings to illustrate what it is what people's responsibilities are and especially in basketball if you've got you know two seconds left on the clock and you have the last shot well the coach is going to draw up a play he's going to draw up a play and say you go here you go there you do this you pass the ball you shoot okay so drawings can be essential in creating some sort of success in your presentations now this is very important Okay, you really need to know this because there are four general styles of delivery available. The first style is manuscript. The manuscript is read from a script.

Okay, very simply, you write it and you present it word for word. You do not deviate from the script. Okay, it's a manuscript speech, write it and deliver it. Now, one of the pluses of a manuscript speech is you've got everything right there in front of you, right?

You you have an opportunity to practice it one of the great One of the great advantage is you can time your speech So if you have to do a three-minute speech, then you can write your speech you can accommodate the three-minute time limit So there's some definite advantages to a manuscript speech on the other hand one of one of the The negative parts of delivering a manuscript speech is you can lose your place, right? That's one thing people oftentimes worry about. Or you could misread a word and create a whole different meaning to your presentation or that particular sentence or whatever the idea is that you're trying to get across.

Okay, the kinds of people that tend to use manuscript speeches a lot are politicians and broadcasters. Memorized speech. Now, this is a manuscript that you write out and you actually commit the speech to memory.

You will not have to give a memorized speech. in this class, okay? No memorized speeches.

You don't have to commit it to memory, okay? Now, what's the good thing about a manuscript speech? Well, I mean a memorized speech.

One of the good things is that you can maintain more connection with your audience. Yeah. If you're really good, if you really memorize the speech well, you can maintain the eye-to-eye contact, which sometimes you don't see in manuscript speeches. Okay. Manuscript speeches might tend to kind of pull your eyes to the paper rather than to the audience.

Memorized speeches give you that ability. What's the negative about a memorized speech? Obviously, you could forget it, right?

And if you forget it, well, plan B. And if you have no plan B, well, I don't know what to say. So that's right. We won't do memorized speeches. Don't worry about that.

And then we have impromptu speeches. These are speeches that are delivered spontaneously on the spur of the moment. We will have these. We'll do a few of these, okay?

An impromptu speech is very simply, I give you a topic and you talk about it for a minute. Okay? It's that simple.

Now, what's the good thing about an impromptu speech? Well, you don't have to do any preparation, really. It's just right off the top of your head, which might be an advantage, might not be an advantage.

Okay? And for some people, the disadvantage is not knowing what they're going to talk about ahead of time, right? But impromptu speeches really end up being the fun speeches that we do.

And it really gives you an opportunity to sharpen your ability. to think on your feet, to come up with something. In an impromptu speech in class, you take it wherever you want to go.

However you interpret the prompt, whether it's a question or a phrase or a sentence or a word, you take it wherever you want to go. And we're going to do that in the next couple of sessions. Extemporaneous speech, this is the type of speech that is most effective when delivering a presentation.

An extemporaneous speech is researched, it's outlined, and it's delivered after careful rehearsal. Now, you're not going to rehearse the speech word for word because this is not a manuscript speech. You're going to have note cards or you're going to have an outline that you're going to use. You're going to bring that up with you.

All you're going to have on the outline or the note cards are the essential points of your presentation. Everything else will be up here. So you're going to sequentially list the things that are important, and you're going to talk about it based on the information you have up here relative to what it says on your outline. Okay, wording your speech. It's very important that you speak in short units.

Okay, don't go on and on and on. Avoid using jargon or technical language. And by this, we mean language or words that might be familiar to you, but not everybody else.

You might use a certain kind of language or certain phrases. at work and if you want to talk about something at your work then you have to define what those words and or phrases are or else interpret them so we can understand them or don't use them at all. Keep your words simple, concrete, appropriate, and vivid. You don't have to use a 25 cent word when a five cent word will do. Okay make sure that the words that you use are exactly what you're trying to say.

Okay if you're trying to say to us that something is yellow then make sure it's not green, okay? Because then there'll be some confusion. So yellow matches with the yellow thing you're talking about.

Use appropriate language. No cussing, no swearing, profanity. That's out in your presentations, okay? And try to keep your speeches as vivid as you can because what you have to do in the course of presenting your speech is to create the images for your audience.

It's not just sharing words. It's sharing a story. It's sharing a part of yourself. So using clear and vivid language might seem something like this.

The water was dirty. What kind of water am I talking about? Go ahead.

Yep, I'm talking about dirty water. But what if I said to you the water, oops, sorry. What if I said to you the water appeared murky and undrinkable? That gives you kind of a different idea of what kind of dirty water I'm talking about, right? It's murky, it's undrinkable.

Who wants to drink that? Well, if you have to, you would drink that. Believe me, I've been in situations where I've had to drink murky and undrinkable water.

Oh, but it's good when that's all you have. Eliminate confusing words or expressions, such as the salt water was as salty as a salt lake block. Well, what the hell does that mean?

It simply means that the water was extremely salty. So just say it was extremely salty. We don't need to know that it was as salty as a Salt Lake block.

I mean, first of all, you got to know what a Salt Lake block is, right? So those of you that do, then okay, you know what it means. Those of you that don't are like, gee, I don't know what that means. Okay, but the water was extremely salty says to us that the water was extremely salty.

Okay, good one. Use transitions. Transitions are very important.

For instance, the water appeared murky and undrinkable, unlike the tall glass of clear water, clear fresh water sitting on the table. Fresh water is an important source of life for many creatures. So initially we're talking about water that appeared murky and undrinkable, right?

But we want to now take the audience from murky, undrinkable water to clean, clear, fresh water. And how do we do that? We have to transition. We have to transition from murky and undrinkable to clear and fresh.

And how do we get there? Okay, the word unlike takes us to the next part of our presentation. And once we establish that what we're going to talk about is not like what we've already talked about, then we can begin to talk about fresh water as an important source of life for many creatures. Okay?

Now, let's talk a little bit about communication apprehensions, because for some of you, it's there. Okay? There's some degree of anxiety about communicating.

It can be helpful, because it's natural for us to feel that. It is natural for us to feel anxious. about getting up in front of the public and saying something. What anxiety can do is it can help to boost our energy. If we take that energy and we channel it back into our presentation, rather than ourselves, if we take it from our head and we move it to the podium, we can find that we can use that energy to help us with a much stronger and a much more significant presentation.

Now, one thing we know about anxiety is that anxiety is energy. It's energy. It's built up energy, right?

And we know that energy cannot be destroyed, but we also know that energy can be transferred. So the idea is to take this energy that we have, this anxiety, and to transfer it into our presentation so we can come out being and feeling more confident about what we did. It's not that we're never not going to be anxious.

We will, okay? You know, you might from speech to speech experience that. But too much anxiety can limit our effectiveness.

It can interfere. It can be the noise that we talked about, the noise that gets in the way. So some causes of apprehension, some are chronic, meaning that it's always there. Some people are very anxiety prone.

They're anxious in a number of situations. A lot of us these days. especially in this particular situation that we're in now with this pandemic, a lot of us have experienced anxiety in ways that we haven't experienced it before.

Okay, so when we experience it that way, it can be chronic, it could be something that comes up all the time. Yeah. Or it can be situational, meaning that depending on the situation, it could arise. You could speak to a small group of about 10 people and you don't feel anxious at all. But get up in front of a group of 100 people, then that anxiety begins to well up in you.

And then again, it could become something that could be debilitating in your presentation. But there are a number of factors that we have to deal with that we can take a look at to help resolve this situation. First of all, it could be that we are unfamiliar with the audience. with the people to whom we are presenting. So it's important for us to get to know the audience.

Yeah, get to know the audience, get to know the people. The more information we have about where we're going to be and who's going to be there, what it's going to be about, the less anxious we're going to be because we're going to have taken care of all those questions that we've had. Sometimes being in an unfamiliar situation will also create the kind of anxiety.

that could interfere with our presentation. So become familiar with the situation. Know what the situation is.

Know why you're getting yourself into this. Have the expectations that you're going to be familiar with the situation, be familiar with the audience, and you're going to come out on top of this. Being in the spotlight.

When you're giving a presentation, you are it. All eyes are focused on you. And a lot of people feel very, very, very uncomfortable. comfortable with that.

They don't like being in the spotlight because all of a sudden they become aware of a flaw they might have. Maybe their hair is out of place. Yeah, maybe they got something stuck in their tooth or whatever.

Or just having people's eyes on you might make you feel uncomfortable. You know, I was an entertainer most of my life, and I'm used to being on stage. I'm used to being in the spotlight on stage in a crowd.

But sometimes getting up to give a speech, I hit that anxiety wall also. Yeah, and being in the spotlight in that case can work against me. We don't like being evaluated.

We don't want people to say, well, that was a good speech. That wasn't a good speech. In this class, I'm the only one who's going to evaluate you. In fact, it's not even an evaluation.

It's just a report on how you did in your presentation. Okay? Nobody else will evaluate you. You can evaluate yourself, but I'll give you a report.

You can take a look at it. I'll tell you what worked and what you need to work on very simply. Okay?

And you might think, you know, I failed at this in the past. What makes me think? it's not going to happen again? Well, because it's not the past.

Okay. You know, the best advice that we can give one another is we don't live in the past. We don't.

And for some of us, it's hard to break out of that past because the past is the only frame of reference we have. But what we have to do is say, you know what? This is now.

Okay. So we've got to live in the now. We've got to present in the now. And we've got to project ourselves to be successful in what.

we do and how we present and nobody's gonna laugh at you nobody's gonna say oh that was that was a shitty speech or whatever yeah i'm sorry that was a junk speech or whatever yeah everybody in this class is a support to you and that's why i require all students to be in class on the days of presentation okay or their points deducted for your absence All right, so we can manage apprehension by understanding that some anxiety is natural and helpful. We can use positive self-talk, okay? That's one way that we can do it. We can convince ourselves. We can talk to ourselves.

We can be kind to ourselves, yeah? We can be empathetic with ourselves. We can say, yeah, I know this is happening. I know I'm feeling this, but it's okay. This is part of the experience.

This is okay. If you know you're going to get up there and you know you're going to be anxious while you're speaking, acknowledge it. Okay? That's the first step to dealing with it.

Acknowledge it. You might be anxious all through your speech, but acknowledging that apprehension or anxiety will help you to focus a little more on what it is you have to say. Okay?

And again, using that positive self-talk, build yourself up. Okay? Practice your breath, breathing.

Okay? Take deep breaths. relax, deep breaths, relax. You know, there is actual scientific research that defines how the mind works and how the physiological aspect of our body functions when we get into an anxious state. And that breathing is probably the most significant way to deal with anxiety.

And I'm not going to do the whole scientific research with you. but there was a really interesting one that came out from Stanford University in 2017. If you want you can just google Stanford University 2017 anxiety and breath response and you'll find something there. Okay now here's some final tips for giving a speech.

Okay arrive early. If you're the first in the class to give your speech don't come in five minutes late. come in before class starts okay if you're doing a group group presentation don't have your group there one minute before class it's not enough time get there early practice with equipment do you have a computer powerpoints that you have to put together and you have to show it to the audience whatever whatever any kind of audio visual equipment or any other type of equipment that you're going to need make sure you have it ready make sure you have an exact location where you need where you need it so you can just grab it and move on okay Consider your clothing and appearance. Make sure that what you wear is appropriate for the type of speech you're giving and the audience to whom you're giving it. You're not going to wear tank tops and board shorts to go give a speech to the Rotary Club.

OK, you're going to wear a nice dress shirt or a nice dress and slacks, shoes. But you might wear board shorts and tank tops if you're going to do some sort of presentation at Honolii because they have some sort of surf competition. OK. So make sure your clothing, your appearance is appropriate.

Walk confidently, okay? You got to feel confident. And that's one of the hardest things for us to do when we're feeling anxious is to feel confident. Yeah.

So we need to put ourselves into a mindset where we say, you know, I got this. I got this. I can be confident about this. Even though I'm anxious, I can do this. You know, it's your presentation.

You put it together. That's the most important thing in the room right now is when you get up, all eyes are focused on you. And you know what? You worked on it.

You have a message, blow them out of the water. Give them your message. Do not walk up there and say, oh, I think these bugs are on junk. I don't want to hear that. I do not want to hear that.

Okay? It's your work. Be proud. Show it off. Okay?

Be confident. Transmit enthusiasm and commitment. They say form follows function, which basically means if you do something long enough, often enough, you'll feel it or you'll believe it or you'll become it. Yeah? So practice that.

And then always complete your speech before going back to your seat. Do not just simply, I'm at the end of my speech, you walk away and you're saying goodbye to the audience as you're walking away. No.

Start your speech at the podium or wherever you're going to start it, end it there, and then turn and leave the audience. For one thing, it's very rude and disrespectful to do that. And the other thing is, it doesn't give the audience a sense that you have great confidence in what you just told them because you just want to get out of there. Okay.

So in a nutshell, this is your presentation on chapter.

Transcript for:Mastering Public Speaking Techniques

Transcript for:
Mastering Public Speaking Techniques