17FebPeanuts And Public Speaking

Public speaking is all about being prepared. The more knowledgeable you are on a subject the more confident you will be to talk about it. The butterflies in your stomach are not because of the people in front of you but rather because of the fear you have of saying the wrong thing. The only way to remove that fear is through preparedness. Here is a funny example of a time when that didn’t happen.

Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners.

In public speaking, as in any form of communication, there are five basic elements, often expressed as “who is saying what to whom using what medium with what effects?” The purpose of public speaking can range from simply transmitting information, to motivating people to act, to simply telling a story. Good orators should be able to change the emotions of their listeners, not just inform them. Public speaking can also be considered a discourse community. Interpersonal communication and public speaking have several components that embrace such things as motivational speaking, leadership/personal development, business, customer service, large group communication, and mass communication. Public speaking can be a powerful tool to use for purposes such as motivation, influence, persuasion, informing, translation, or simply entertaining. Here’s another “slip up” video… this one is bad…

Effective public speaking can be developed by joining a club such as Rostrum, Toastmasters International, Association of Speakers Clubs (ASC), Speaking Circles or International Training in Communication (ITC) in which members are assigned exercises to improve their speaking skills. Members learn by observation and practice, and hone their skills by listening to constructive suggestions followed by new public speaking exercises. These include:

* Oratory
* The use of gestures
* Control of the voice (inflection)
* Vocabulary, register, word choice
* Speaking notes
* Using humor
* Developing a relationship with the audience

Using a forum such as Toastmasters to practice public speaking skills after receiving professional training is a time-tested approach to developing one’s ability to speak well. It is difficult to really receive any formal training, but Forensics can still be taught and practiced by those seeking to improve their public communication skills. The organization is among one of the largest nationally recognized that specializes in the improvement and networking of effective communication skills throughout the world.

The new millennium has seen a notable increase in the number of training solutions offered in the form of video and on-line courses. Video can provide significant training potential by revealing to the student actual examples of behaviors to emulate in addition to verbal knowledge transfer.