Posted by alexandra_k on December 15, 2017, at 17:08:56
In reply to Re: happy holidays maybe » beckett2, posted by sigismund on December 11, 2017, at 15:55:43
> My daughter (who can do this) is going to write her speech out and hold it in her hands. I will do that. My goodness, I will even work my way toward feeling comfortable.
I'm not very comfortable with public speaking, either. I've had to give quite a few seminar presentations, over the years, and what I found helped me was writing down everything I planned on saying beforehand and doing at least 3 proper practice runthroughs.
Different people are different...
One seminar speaker I knew (who was really good at it IMHO) surprised me by saying that he wrote down everything and practiced by running through at least 3 times, too. He seemed responsive to the audience etc rather than reading from a script.
Some of the best lectures I remember from undergraduate psychology were surprisingly scripted, too. With large classes they do repeat lectures so some students attend a morning session and others attend an afternoon session. One lecture I found really good so I went back to the afternoon session and it was exactly the same. I didn't realise how scripted it was. How the lecturer had probably given the same lecture (or only with minor modifications) every year for the past 10 years, or something.
It kind of gets it in motor memory so your body knows what it is up to so you behave smoothly even when you feel like your brain has frozen or you can't attend to anything except your heart going thumpity thump, thumpity thump, thumpity thump. If it's practiced it's more like... Driving a car, or something.
Some people can ad lib... But most people are surprisingly scripted when it comes to talks, I've learned. Sometimes people do take little ad lib detours or engage in a bit of genuine audience interaction - but that is with the security of a well trodden path for them to return to.
I'm sure you will be great :)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1096307
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20160906/msgs/1096340.html