I believe the most helpful concept I learned from this class were the techniques used to calm down while giving your speech. For example, channeling your nervous or anxious energy into something positive, such as excitement. Every time I would go up in front of the class, I would tell myself it would be alright and how excited I was to give this speech. Even though it was never true, it helped feeling that way instead of me thinking how nervous and terrible my speech would be. Another technique I found useful was relaxation breathing. When I start to feel nervous I take a couple deep breaths, especially before I go up in front of the audience. To me, these two techniques were the most helpful out of everything we learned. We learned many helpful writing tools to help develop our outline, but my main concern going into this class was my nerves.
I know what you are talking about because every time before my speech I felt the same way and I was very nervous and I couldn't do anything with it, but these techniques which you have described in your post are really helpful. Every time when I have to give a speech I'm always nervous and I have tried different methods to give my speech by heart and read my speech using my notes but nothing really helped me. I know and believe that our anxiety will be reduced if we are able to practice our speeches as often as possible. Absolutely we have to remember that we will never be completely free of our fear of public speaking - and that's good. Why? Because those feelings motivate us to prepare for our speech. Without nervousness to motivate you, you might not prepare thoroughly for your speech, and will likely do poorly as a result.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what I said was the most helpful. It is very true how taking a few deep breaths really helps. I found that the relabeling and relaxation techniques definitely helped my nerves as they did for you also. The writing techniques were a lot of things that I personally learned in English so the nerves were my main concern. After all public speaking is one of the top fears of all people so if we can figure out how to help calm down then that is a success. I think that learning to stay calm was the most helpful thing for the class but it also will help in different aspects of life.
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