Imagup General Magazine 2024
We live in an era of technological advancement, smartphones, and the Internet, however, public speaking is still the best way to inspire and persuade people from all walks of life. If you can deliver specific content or sell an idea to individuals, you can gain various benefits for both professionally and personally. Although you might not speak publicly often, developing and working on your skills can increase your self-confidence, as well as reduce your nervousness when you need to get up on the stage and give a good speech. If you are getting prepared for giving a speech in front of a large audience, you might be looking for ways to improve your presentation and speaking skills. And, luckily for you, this article might help you with that. In the text below, you will be able to read about the best tips for improving your speaking skills. Let’s take a closer look:
Focus on Your The Tone, Pitch, and Volume of Your Voice
There is no better tool when you are giving a speech than your voice.
The most important tool when you are publicly speaking is your voice. You can boost the quality of it by doing breathing exercises such as diaphragmatic breathing. By doing so, you will be able to reduce breathlessness which is quite normal if you are nervous about giving a speech. These exercises will also help you with other things such as your tone and the quality of it, pitch whether it needs to be low or high, and the volume of it.
Focus on Your Stage Presentation
According to SlideModel, a public speaker needs to appear friendly, confident, energetic, and enthusiastic while on stage. By choosing, liking, and researching the topics you will talk about, you will be able to entirely be confident while talking. Being friendly can be shown in simple ways, like smiling to the audience, asking them how they are before you start talking, or you might even get them involved in a discussion at some point in your speech. When you actually love what you are talking about, enthusiasm and energy will come by themselves. However, if you do not feel like your stage presentation is up to par, you can look at videos of other people giving speeches and try to copy what they are doing – to put it simply, pretend you are comfortable until you actually feel like that.
Focus on Your Body Language
You will need to think about what your body language states and what message it delivers. If you want to improve it, you will want to practice standing in a casual upright manner and practice placing your hands at each side of your body or holding them in front of you unless you make a gesture to make a point. Besides these exercises, you will also want to focus and be aware of the facial expressions you make. Your facial expressions need to match your topic, so if you are giving a speech on a cheerful topic, you can have a relaxed, lively expression. However, if the speech is about a serious topic, your face should be as well.
Make a Connection With The Audience
If your focus is to become a good public speaker you will definitely need to include your audience. As previously mentioned, you should acknowledge them before you begin talking about the speech topic. This will allow them to connect with you on a higher level and it will keep them focused on your speech. You should also make eye contact with them, as well as smile and nod if you notice that there is a communication between some audience members.
Focus on Your Delivery
Now, the one thing you should focus on the most when public speaking is delivery. Even if you adjusted your tone and practiced your body language, the point you are trying to deliver can easily get lost if people cannot follow and understand what your speech is about. Keep in mind that you should speak slowly, pause between two different points or ideas, properly pronounce words and articulate them and avoid sentence fillers such as “oh” and “um”. Also, change the pitch of your voice to make the topic more interesting. If you want to see what workshop, classes, and seminars you can attend, check out EffectivePresentation.
Use Visual/Audio Aids
Using visual and audio aids can bring the topics closer to your audience, however, you should not implement too many in your speech. By showing your audience a lot of slides, pictures, or playing them sounds, you might distract them from your speech, as well as break the connection they previously had with you. Only use them when you need to clarify something, or if you need to maintain or attract more attention from your audience.
It Is Okay To Be Nervous
As the final tip, you should know that it is entirely normal to feel anxious and nervous when giving a speech. Trembling legs and hands, a racing heart, and a trembling voice is something that happens to everyone. Even to the most experienced speakers out there. And, although you might feel like you are performing poorly, you should not think like that – nervousness might be good since it will make you more alert. The best way to avoid this is to prepare properly. Once you know everything there is about what your topic is, you might feel more comfortable on stage.
Conclusion
By following the tips from this article, you might improve your skills. Hence, now that you know what you should practice, do not waste any more time and start preparing right away!
