Ah, public speaking: it’s the topic that people love to hate. Like 90% of Americans, I used to dread class presentations.
But now? I love them. Even though I used to get sick just thinking about speaking in front of a class, I eventually figured out how to relieve the sources of my anxiety.
Here are my top four tips for public speaking:
1. Gauge whether your audience is actually enjoying your presentation.
If your audience is bored, it’s because you are being boring. Make a few jokes about the class, point out your own discomfort or add a story. Don’t just blurt information like your classmates are collegiate robots waiting to be programed with the same information they’ve been studying themselves; put an interesting spin on it, and the whole class will love you.
2. Don’t put your outline in your Power Point.
If your professor wants an outline, ask them if you can turn in a printed page of notes. This will save you if you accidentally talk too fast or slow: with the freedom to choose what you want to tell the class at any given moment, you’ll be able to end early or go longer rather than awkwardly flipping through slides or running out of visual aids.
3. Use pictures in your slides.
With pictures, you’ll have even more freedom to choose what you tell the class. You can tell a story, recite statistics or end early, and the photo will serve as an appropriate backdrop for everything (just remember to cite all your pictures!). I like to add in a quote that goes with the theme of the presentation so I can talk about it if I realize I’m going too fast.
4. Have some extra information you can pull from if you need to.
I’ll never forget one presentation I gave in a government class during sophomore year: I had finished my last main point and was about to give a few concluding sentences, until I looked at the clock and realized I still had to keep talking for another two minutes. I actually thought about cutting my losses and quitting, but I paused, looked down at my notes and thought back to my research. I talked about anything I could think of from my reading that I could tie back in to what I had already covered, and I was able to finish within the timeframe I was given. Everything I said was relevant to my presentation, so no one knew about the pacing mistake (including the professor)!
Don’t worry about being perfect: your audience wants to hear from you, and they’ll want to hear you even more if you make it interesting!
Photo credit: Cover, 1.