Group Presentations Blog

 

There are two types of speakers, those who have a fear of public speaking, and those who don’t. Research from 2019 shows that about 74% of people suffer from speech anxiety. Fear of public speaking is known as glossy phobia. People like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, different Presidents all know the thing when it comes to public speaking, confidence is key. Why is public speaking so important. In democracy it can help you exercise your rights to free speech and be a member of your society. As a life skill you learn how to think critically problem solve, decision making, conflict resolution, and team building. At work and in your career, you need strong communication skills.

We speak now more than ever and are connected more than ever. With social media and technology public speakers are more in demand. Universities, colleges, and businesses all use public speakers to speak with students or employees. There are 7 components of the communication process. 

The source is the presenter or speaker giving the speech or presentation. 

The receiver is the audience or crowd that is listening to the speaker. 

The message is what the speaker is saying and doing, it includes the verbal and nonverbal messages. 

The channel is how the message is being consumed, listening in-person, on tv, or hearing it through the radio. 

The feedback is how the audience reacts to the message. 

The situation is the time, place, and occasion that the message is being delivered.

The noise is whatever obstacles to overcome to deliver the message.

Public speaking is a unique form of communication. Keeping it brief is very important. Keep it simple means to break down complex topics for your audience to understand. Keeping it limited means to give direct statements, keep to main points, and brief declaration. Make sure what you’re saying is important, make sure the topic peaks the interest of many. Cover the vital topics, important issues, things that make a difference. Use current topics, things that are affecting you or your audience now. Things you should avoid are topics that are exhausted, things that are talked about more than necessary. Illegal items and topics are important to avoid, and always make sure to avoid insulting your audience.

With confidence in your speaking, you will keep your audience captive and interested. Remember to use Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, it will help you stay credible (Ethos), show your emotion while speaking (Pathos), and help you make sense (Logos). On the flip side, this will help you reduce your fear of presenting. People that have communication apprehension will avoid public speaking. Planning what you’re going to say and do during your presentation will help. Things to do that will help you prepare are:

Gather materials before the presentation.

Carefully review the assignment expectations.

Use the invention process to accumulate information.

Plan to be organized.

Plan to be clear.

When selecting details, focus on the quality, not quantity.

Edit for your style.

Practice is key. Practice, practice, practice.

Plan for effective delivery.

Try to enjoy the opportunity.

There are many different types of presentations. You have impromptu presentations, presenting yourself, presenting a classmate, and demonstration presentations. Different types of speech are necessary for different presentations. Narrative speech, repetition and ornamental speech, and reviewing and analyzing speech are important to use while presenting. 

Make sure that you’re finding a topic that targets the audience you’re presenting to. Individual brainstorming, categorical brainstorming, conducting a personal inventory, current topic identification, and internet searching are the different methods you can use to search for topics to present. Using speech appropriateness will help you choose topics that are appropriate for you and your audience, appropriate for the occasion, and general purpose, including to inform, to persuade, or highlight special occasions. This helps you find the purpose of your speech, being mainly informative or mainly persuasive. Along with different types of speeches, you have different purposes for speeches such as special occasion speeches, specific purpose speeches, and thesis statements.

A very important part of giving a speech is knowing your audience. Audience analysis is very important when building your presentation. Using knowledge of your audience to pick your topic and method of speech will help you deliver a better speech overall. Audience interest, audience engagement, and audience motivation are the keys to audience analysis and learning about your audience. Key factors for audience analysis include size of the audience, the environment, the occasion, the time, and the importance of the situation. 

When it comes to building your presentation, there are key factors that are necessary to keep your audience engaged and get your message out. The research you do plays a vital role in your presentation and serves as a strong foundation. Selecting and arranging content is important because it provides valuable information, and will make you more credible. Source information from books and articles are valuable sources of information. Interviews with experts that have a background in the topics also adds a lot of credibility. When conducting these interviews, you want to make sure you’re presenting the interview in the correct way and not misrepresenting what you were told. Using a recorder, taking notes, and having questions ready will help your interview run smoothly and get the most information out of the source.

When preparing your speech, the words you use are just as important as the information you’re presenting.  When choosing your words, you need to be aware of different meanings of what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. The way your audience interprets what you’re saying is the difference between them understanding your presentation and them not hearing a thing you say.

Organizing your presentation is important because it improves your credibility as a speaker and helps the audience understand your message. The benefits to organizing your speech will help with many different things such as your confidence, your smoothness in delivering the speech and how well the audience understands and absorbs the information. The basic principles of outlining your speech are subordination, division, and parallelism.

Transitioning between the different parts of your presentation is very helpful and keeps your audience engaged. Finding when to conclude your speech is also necessary to make sure the information is absorbed and not ignored. A speech that goes on too long will be just as bad as a speech that is too short. Using effective delivery during your speech will make the information easier to digest for your audience. Using the different modes of delivery in different speeches will help you deliver your message. 

Another key factor is how you present yourself while giving the presentation. Using your voice effectively goes a long way in keeping your audience engaged. But also using enough gestures while presenting will help your message come across the right way. Wearing the right clothes plays a large part subconsciously to not take focus away from your presentation. Speaking at the level of your audience will also help deliver your message. 

Certain principles should guide your informative presentation. Relating the topic to the presenter is the best way to show you care about the topic. Relating the topic to the audience will help the audience care about what is being presented. This type of presentation is a great way of presenting topics that teach a lot of information on a topic. 

With persuasive presentations, you as a presenter are trying to influence an audiences choice or response to a subject. You have the speech to convince, the speech to inspire, and the speech of action. Each are unique in the situation that they are used. 

Speaking on special occasions are unique presentations that usually center around an event or ceremony. In these speeches the purposes of the speech are either about the special occasion, to inform the audience about the occasion, or to use the occasion to motivate the audience. They tend to be more formal, and use different techniques to deliver the speech.

Skills you need for effective group presentations are creativity, coordination, identification of quick resolutions of conflict, and the ability to incorporate discussion. When it comes to group presentations, cooperation is key.  You have different types of group presentations as well, such as symposia, panels, and debates.