All you need to know about Public Speaking for Starters

Brief introduction on Public Speaking for beginners

Public speaking is a form of communication that consists of the five common basic elements – who, what, to whom, medium and effect. There may be different purposes of public speaking. These purposes vary from providing information to arousing people to take action. A good public speaker does not only inform people but is also able to make the listener feel, form an opinion or to react. The influence of the public speaker on the audience reveals how proficient a speaker is in his talking. Public speaking has several components such as motivational speaking, leadership/personal development, business, customer service, large group communication, and mass communication.

Defining Public Speaking – What is Public Speaking?

Public speaking is the act of speaking or lecturing a group of audience in a well-organized and presentable manner for the purpose of informing, influencing or entertaining. It can also be easily defined as the face-to-face speaking between two people and an audience for the purpose of transferring information from one part to another. Commonly, public speaking is used for the purpose of convincing the audience.

Training and Education

In order to become an effective speaker, you can take classes or joining public speaking communities, where you can observe other orators and also practice your speech and get feedback from your peers and professionals. An effective speaking is based on many factors such as

• The use of hand gesture 
• Tone control 
• Choice of words, register (use of language for different purpose and in different social settings) 
• Sense of humor 
• Eye contact 
• Connection with audience 
• Use of visual presentation You can also learn the methods of public speaking online via video channels and online courses.   

General

The objective of public speaking may range from conveying information to motivate people, to tell people a story or a timeline. Profession speakers involve politicians and top public figures. They are often engaged in ongoing training for better speaking techniques and tools. Public speaking is regarded as one of the most values personal skills of a person. It can be handy in almost any kind of situation. Some people are born to become public speakers; however, they also need consistent practice and improvement of their skill. Acquiring knowledge and understanding the purpose of communication can contribute a speaker to deliver his or her message more effectively. Famous public figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill and Sukarno are prominent examples of professional orators who can impact their society with their public speaking skills. The speeches of public figures are widely judged and questioned by both their supporter and critics.

Tools

For large audience, the speaker will use a microphone and speaker to deliver their speech to their audience. Some speech notes may help the speaker to memorize the speech content. Rostrums are used for hold such notes for speakers.

Practice your public speaking skills in public spaces - park, square, etc.

One of the main factors of a good public speaking is to attract the audience. The word public speaking itself have the word "public", which implies for everyone who's listening to our speech. Attraction usually comes along with personal interest and good leadership. This does not only apply to public speaking alone. Whether you're leading a group of people for aerobic dancing or you're gathering public to make a protest, you need to create a sense of attraction and awareness so that people want to follow you. You can captivate this by oral, visual, motion etc.

Even though you have a great speech written for you, it does not necessarily mean that you'll be a good public speaker. People may not want to pay attention to you or respond to you. So, a simple way to practice to be a good speaker is to do some leisure activities in a public space such as parks or squares. This will give you an idea of how many percentage of the total population at a certain place would pay attention to you.

To give you an example, I have seen two aerobic dancers in Lumpini Park in Bangkok every evening. Whenever Dancer A takes the stage, there are more audience filling up the entrance of the park gate. For Dancer B, there are half the audience of dancer A. I tried to analyse why there's such a difference since both performs at the exact location and the same number of potential participants. Then I realized that (1) Dancer A plays on recently hit songs while B just uses songs that she's comfortable with. (2) Dance A makes her move slow, easy and clear while dancer B focus on her own accuracy. These factors revealed that Dancer B did not paid any attention to her audience and did not adapt her activity to suit the peers, while Dancer A overtook her by doing so. This is a good start for public speaking on how you can receive the public attention and how you can make them more comfortable being with you.

So, in your school activities or workplace parties, you should try to test how much you are capable of attracting others' attention. This can make you to become a good public speaker.

If you're interested to make such kind of activity in Bangkok, I would suggest you to go to Lumpini Park - Bangkok, Thailand just by Silom MRT. This park have different peer group of different age, interest and personality, and it is also the place with widest public leisure activities happening every day. There's no doubt it could be the best place for you to try out some public activities.

What should do after I graduate ?

from the previous article that i wrote last 2 years (2011) after i got topic to write and submit to the English class "How can you learn public speaking through daily talks?"


WIKIPEDIA: Public Speaking
WIKIPEDIA: Audience Response

How can you learn public speaking through daily talks?

How many hours a day do you spend talking to your family, friends, colleagues or even strangers? The more often you spend talking to someone, the wider range of skill you have developed in speaking. The following are a range of skills that might have been developed through everyday talks: -

1.       Organizing your thoughts logically.

Instead of speaking out whatever flows into your mind, you need to find a logical order so that the listener can tract your points. This may be seen in the case of telling people direction or guiding on how to follow the procedures in our daily life.

2.       Adapting your message to the listener.

You may learn to respond different to different age group of people and people with different background knowledge. For example, you are a geology major. Two people ask you how pearls are formed. One is your roommate and the other is your nine-year-old niece.

Your response to the first listener maybe:

“When any irritant, say a grain of sand, gets inside the oyster’s shell, the oyster automatically secretes a substance called nacre, which is principally calcium carbonate and is the same material that lines the oyster’s shell. The nacre accumulates in layers around the irritant core to form the pearl.”

Your response to your niece may be:

“Imagine you are an oyster on the ocean floor. A grain of sand gets inside your shell and makes you uncomfortable. So you decide to cover it up. You cover it up with a material called mother-of pearl. The covering builds up around the grain of sand to make a pearl.”

3.       Story-telling skills

It is also essential to Change your tone of conversation according to the mood you want to create inside the hearers’ mind. For example, you’re telling a sad story to your friend. The first line of your conversation should be dull and depressing instead of starting off with a funny joke.

4.       Adapting to listener feedback.

Whenever you talk with somebody, you need to beware of that person’s verbal, facial and physical reactions. For example, you should not go on talking and talking when your friends stop responding you and trying to change the topic. You’ll have to realize that your topic is too boring, unrelated or insulting them.

Each and every day, we’re practicing these skills regularly without noticing it. They’re the most important communication skills you will need for public speaking. Most people who are able to communicate well in daily talk are capable of public speaking just as well. By the same way, improving in public speaking can make you into a better communicator in a wide range of situations such as discussion, meetings, conferences and presentations. 

How can public speaking enhance your life and career?

 

                 Public speaking is most likely to make a big difference to everyone’s life in any society. Many successful leaders and representative of the organizations around the world are capable of appearing and speaking in the public effectively. If you would be able to communicate and express yourself confidently in front of the public, you’ve done almost the half way of impressing the other person. "It is vital to be able to communicate with others. It adds at least 50% to your value,” Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, said in one 

BBC Interview in 2009. 

                Public speaking will change your personality into a more communicative person. Since in this world today social network has become one of the key factors to success, you should be able to involve yourself in a wider society and make connections through communication. In order to so, you’ll need confidence so that you can express yourself better to others and ensure that they will not misinterpret your speech. It will help bridge gaps in understanding, cooperation and set goals and objectives. So in this aspect, public speaking would improve your life by gaining more opportunity for your career.

                Moreover, your public speaking skill is one of the main factors which quantify your capability in any kind of work. Since almost all careers involve a lot of talking and negotiation, it would be impressive if you can speak convincingly to the other party. It could save time, money, and most importantly, strengthen trust and reliability. "Your careers will be determined largely by how well you speak, by how well you write, and by the quality of your ideas… in that order," MIT Professor Patrick Henry Winston once mentioned. Since the first step of communication is conveyed through speech, the impression you imposed on your listener tells them a bit about what type of a person you are.

                By appearing in public effectively, you will be able to make a difference in your business, community and perhaps even the world. By sharing your information with others, you're better able to increase the impact of your hopes, dreams, desires and goals for your life and the world around you. Once you can speak diplomatically, there will be more supporter and fans around you. And they could perform as part of the bridge to your goals.

                Poor public speaking skill may be one of the reasons why a lot of ideas by some of the most intelligent scientists are only discovered many years after their death. One of the possible reasons is that although they are highly intelligent and have written very useful information, they just cannot seem to put through to people what they are thinking about due to their lack of ability to communicate to a large group of people using public speaking techniques. In other words, no matter how professional you could be in your field of work, unless you know how to convey the correct information into your community, you will not be regarded as professional.

                So, all in all, I think public speaking is a medium of effective communication and it is inevitable that everyone of us should obtain this skill at one stage in our life in order to walk more comfortably to our destiny.