Public speaking is the act of performing a speech to a live audience. Earlier, it was believed to be a formal form of communication to address, persuade, or inform the audience. However, Modern Public speaking is more of an informal speech used for forming connections to entertain and motivational purposes. Public speaking cannot be achieved or trained within a day. It’s a process a person goes through and mastered with experience, practice, and guidance. The benefits of public speaking are known to all how it builds confidence, gives success in many fields, better writing research, and deductive skills.
The “Speak Like A Pro” course was facilitated by Ms. Pooja Dangol, Corporate Trainer. The course was held for 3 days and it was such a wonderful session for all the participants who wanted to enhance their speaking skills. These courses offered strategies for learners to excel at public speaking while getting rid of their fear of speaking in public. It will also guide you in ways to establish a rapport with your audience while delivering your speech with confidence.
The course offered simple strategies for speakers of all levels where the participants learned to use their style and personality to present with mastery and confidence in terms of public speaking making it engaging and interesting at the same time. The session started with a general introduction of the speaker and all the participants were asked to introduce themselves one by one.
Evaluating Different Sources of Information
Ms. Dangol addressed different types of sources that may be relevant for speech topics. These include the internet, newspapers, books, reference tools, interviews, and websites. You must know how to evaluate the credibility of each type of source material.
Basic Structure of a Speech
Ms. Dangol introduced the basic structure of a speech and needed to make it easy for your audience to understand your point, split it into three sections: Opening, Body, and Conclusion. In the opening section, you aim to tell your audience who you are and what you’re talking about. The way you start your speech is, of course, very important. It’s what will grip the audience. They say that people have judged you as soon as you go up on stage, so it’s crucial to catch their attention.
Likewise, in the Body, you speak about each point in detail. For each point, you must give the audience some evidence or information that will help explain and support each point. In the Conclusion, we try to summarize the idea and give the audience some sort of actionable takeaway.
Opening of the Speech
The facilitator then gave some useful tips to open the speech, which can be either via the use of story, quotation, humor, question, ice-breaking activity, or direct appreciation and experience sharing. The participants got engaged to write the opening speech for the topic of their interests.
Ms. Dangol also shared that the first impressions and the overall appearance of a speaker are important. An audience often forms an impression of a speaker before any words are spoken. Several things contribute to the appearance of a speaker including grooming, style, and fit of clothing, posture, facial expression, and appearance of confidence. She also explained that body gestures play a very important role in the presentation.
Effective Voice Projection, Eye Contact, and Gestures
A public speaker must be mindful of his or her physical appearance, which like attractiveness, includes, social, emotional, intellectual, vocal presence, handling of the speech manuscript, managing communication apprehension, eye contacts, the smile, hand gestures, handshakes, posture, dexterity in handling the information and communication technologies in the speaking situation; and above all, the capability to adjust ideas to the audience and adjust the audience to the ideas in real-time. A good public speaker must have the power to give energy.
The participants also were engaged in interesting quizzes & games via Mentimeter. There was also an activity to share about one of the awful presentations they had been part of. Every participant shared their experience. They were also divided into two groups for a breakout activity, where they shared different ideas to make the presentation engaging to the audience.
Ms. Dangol also shared some really useful tips while delivering the presentation. She guided them on the techniques to spell words correctly, pause on commas, and also make delivery understandable with correct voice modulation.
Believe in yourself. Just learn, speak, and grow. Keep practicing, don’t give up and then you will speak like a PRO!