Public Speaking Reflection

Public speaking, also called oratory or oration, is the act of speaking to a live audience (such as a large group of people), with the intent of relaying information to them, regardless of the medium. Public speaking is considered an art since it requires talent and inspiration to create a lasting impact thus requiring an extensive amount of planning for it to be well done. The type of communication relayed is structured to inform, persuade, and/or entertain. I will speak about what I assimilated from the presentations given on public speaking.

The presentations initially spoke about the fundamentals of speech and what it consists of. They went on to list the main ingredients for a fruitful discussion: the speaker, the message, and the audience. The desirable characteristics of a successful speaker are confidence, passion, brevity and audience awareness. Confidence is crucial to any speaker who wishes to deliver a victorious speech. When you are focused and calm you are better able to articulate your thoughts, and effectively deliver a speech with clarity. It is important to maintain eye contact with the audience, match facial expressions with what you are saying, and reduce nervous habits as much as possible.

Effective communication also goes hand in hand with being passionate about a topic, when you have passion for a topic you are able to connect to your audience, deliver a memorable presentation, and it causes you to persist until your presentation is as perfect as possible. In many cases, like the ones shown in the presentation videos, passion matches and even beats technique. Being passionate about something results in higher creativity, goal achievement, persistence, and performance. Passion is considered valuable and is a win-win characteristic for presentations, both the audience and the speaker gain something when there is a passion for the topic at hand; the audience wins by getting a quality experience and the speaker wins by delivering a successful presentation.

Famous landmark speeches and speakers throughout history were exemplified within the presentation, using them to pinpoint the main things that stand out: their emotional power, and ability to spark imaginations while uplifting spirits. However, one thing is easily overlooked because it is made out to seem so effortless; brevity. In contrast with verbosity, the purpose of brevity in oral presentations is to deliver a clear, concise message; it helps focus on the chief ideas through carefully chosen words.

The presentation instructed that, in order to carry out brevity, certain steps are to be followed. Scrupulously interrogating verbiage and substituting specific and powerful words in place of any vague and redundant material. Avoiding filler words such as “um”, “uh” or “like” and being mindful of overexplaining will encourage people to take you at face value. A message that is direct and simple will always be more effective. The goal is to communicate adequately so that every and all aspects of a situation are understood.

Audience awareness means knowing who you are trying to convince and how to convince them. Knowing your audience is another important determinant of the information that should be included in your presentation. Considering your audience when it comes to choosing your tone, content, and language will allow you the opportunity to convey a focused and proper message. Things to consider are 

demographic information like the audience’s gender, socioeconomic status, race, and other factors that can potentially influence their frame of reference. When people become audience members they bring expectations about the occasion, topic, and speaker. Violating the expectations of your audience can be detrimental and ultimately impact the effectiveness of your speech in a negative manner. Something that resonated with me was to never assume that your audience is like you. Presenting an overly basic concept to an audience, that is highly knowledgeable in the matter at hand, can come off as insulting. Conversely, speaking at a level that is too advanced for your audience can, too, be seen as offensive.

Different methods of public speaking were discussed, including informative, ceremonial, persuasive, and demonstrative, these are typically accompanied by aids. The type of presentation aids that are most often used are pictures, graphs, charts, diagrams, maps, videos, audio, and the like. Aids are chosen depending on their purpose, for example, you may provide the audience with informative handouts in order to fully engage them, or a graph showing trending sales of past years could be used for the purpose of pitching a product to a potential group of investors. Regardless, it is important to remember that even though the help of aids may or may not be used, the most important visual aid is yourself and you will serve the purpose of correlating the content to your purpose.

Contributions to presentations can be a solo or group effort; in terms of solo presentations, the success of the presentation is entirely up to you, you handle how things are organized and displayed as opposed to group presentations where the quality of collaboration input is crucial for goal achievement. Solo presentation entirely eliminates conflict as opposed to working in a group where the workload is sometimes distributed unfairly and can at times be challenging to accommodate everyone’s needs. Group presentations carry more restrictions on things like selecting a group topic, assigning work to individuals, and meeting deadlines. However, there is usually less work since it is distributed between more than just one person. Even though solo presentations make you work for your money, you have the ability to work at your own pace. Both alternatives have pros and cons, finding the right one for the occasion should be based on the information being presented.

Always remembering to end off strong is the last key thing to implement, because it is your last chance to really explain the importance of your message; it allows you to signal the end of your presentation and reiterate the main ideas. So, the ideal pattern would be: 

“Tell them what you are going to say, say it, and tell them what you have said.”