What should you do if you suffer from nervousness every time you are assigned to speak in public? It sounds almost threatening to even admit that public speaking has become so essential nowadays. In other words, you just can't ignore or avoid it.
Particularly for students, oral presentations and speeches make up a handsome portion of the assessment. For working adults, the talent and ability to speak eloquently in public may promise promotions, popularity and influence. Hence, experts advise handling this phenomenon with care as it may impinge your reputation, career and future.
Some people claim that nervousness is a normal experience for beginning speakers. I agree. With adequate exposure and practice, things will look better. Maturity and experience in life mould composure in public speakers.
When I started public speaking, I remember the painful jitters and tremors. I told myself that I should find strategies to prevent the audience from noticing my nervousness. I memorized my speech and presented it with proper modulation of voice and eloquence. Later, I developed the habit of reading so that I could talk and argue on almost anything, with conviction. Some topics may be difficult, so I took the trouble to prepare and do sufficient research.
There are loads of advice on how to handle nervousness in public speaking in the market. Nevertheless, you must select the most appropriate for your personality and oratory skills.The list can go on, but does any of the tips to combat nervousness work for you? Do you actually need 'prescription' or does the remedy actually develop with age and familiarity?
Whatever your public speaking experience entails, please remember that nervousness shouldn't impede determination to explore this realm of elegance. I wish you all the best in your future speaking endeavours.
Would you like to reflect and share your encounter with 'nervousness'? The last time you were nervous in public, what did you do? What did you tell yourself? What was the secret ingredient that gave you the strength to conquer your nervousness in public speaking?
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 446 Newer› Newest»i got experience of nervousness when i in PLKN..that time i got joined the acting contest whereby i need to perform on the stage infront of others PLKN trainee and trainers..i felt that it was a scariest time that i ever had in my life because i had never perform infront of crowded audience before since my secondary and primary school..but that time what did i do is i open my spectacles and i perform like i've never seen the audience and alhamdulillah i won the first prize..
-Amirul Hafidz IS085692-
Most people experience some level of speech anxiety when they have to speak in front of a group; in fact, public speaking is many people’s greatest fear. Me myself is one of them. The last time i was speaking in public, i was shaking, sweating and having rapid heartbeat. What i did to overcome my nervousness is, breathe in and out deeply couple of times before i go on and for me it is very effective. Along with breathing deeply, i also smiling to create the feel-good chemicals that can internally boost my mood and make me feel more relaxed. That is all. TQ
Assalamualaikum. hi puan zue. The last time I was nervous when I sat for examination. Yes. That was the last time. But, the last time I got nervous in public speaking is when my name was called in Computer Forensic class. I was asked to gave a 5 minutes speech about anything, and what just can I do that time is just talk about anything that came out from my head. When I got nervous, I always tell to myself that every people infront me are just same level with me. I was taught in Bahasa Melayu class about how to bear with nervousness. You can try hold something in your hand. insyaAllah, it can lower your nervousness.
for me my self, i can say that i am a nervous speaker, i might have a lots of things to say in my mind, but at the end when it comes to how to throw it with words and voice, i will just become clueless idiot. huhuhu
nervous speaker..i am also one of them..especially speaking in front with many people...make me sweat..the reasons maybe i don't have confidence in myself..i hope i can counter my nervous and speak confidently..one day...
The very first time in school I was giving my speech about the topic “Sports” in front of 500 people including teachers and students. Although my speech doesn’t goes well, but I’m able to deliver the message to them.
One of the reasons the speech doesn’t goes well is because of my stammering problem. I had this problem since I was born. However, I managed to overcome this problem by practicing reading newspaper in front of mirror.
Some thinks that language is a barrier in their daily life. For me it’s not when you able to deliver the message in a proper way which can be understood by the other person. But when comes to public speaking we must deliver it with good tone and manner and of course without grammatical error because without this the message may lead to other meanings.
One of the best things you can do is to record video when you make a presentation. Usually when people see themselves, they surprised by the quiet and comfortable. That's because while the mind is criticize and evaluate our performance the audience usually does not see that at all. Remember the nervous speaker will be always nervous until they find a solution on it.
haha..I am the nervous speaker. okay, im not used to speaking english in front of many people. maybe i was born to this world to be a really2 shy person. haha. furthermore, I dont have experience too. at my school, there not many student that can speak english. we used to speak malay in everyday of school life. experience is really2 important in any task. when we have experience, we can perform the task so well. and i think, i can't be a good speaker. thats all, thank you.
wanmohdfahmi
hi everyone,
as what i know being in front on stage will ensure the feelings of nervous. it is a definitely yes. as i here in uniten, the first time im being in front was long away back in my foundation level in 2009 which i can remember too much about that.
but what i remembered until now is about a thing that i will never do it again in my life ever again. which is im presenting in front of the class wearing women dress on me due to our title of "Transgender". even it is a pairing presentation but the level of nervousness inside myself i couldn't describe. i don't have any confident at all to be in front. am i still presenting ? yes to the sake of to finished up what i start and just wanna be something different from others.
what do i do before presenting or be infront ? usually i need to build my self-confident that i will make sure physically im is ready which is im wearing a correct attire and neat. next is to make sure the presentation aids is well prepared. the slide is done and im done with my own research.
it is good to be infront of the public or wherever it is. better from being a person which only talking too much behind and doing nothing.
thank you,
-Jim
Salam Puan Zue.
nervousness from public speaking ? somehow i think that when you are assigned to be a speaker and speak infront of public, actually it doesnt threatening you but it can consider as challenges. well you will not always get the chances to be infront of many people and do the talk.
For me, since we are in the kindergarten, we always have a speech infront of people or our friends such as we introduce ourself in front of them during first class. so during that time, did you feel nervous ? for me no.
As im growing in student life, i have been assigned as public speaking more than 10 times ( if im not mistaken ). so from my experience, i think we dont need to be nervous. when you know the topic to be talk, just related it with your life and experiences. sometimes public speakin dont need to be fact all the times and it can be logic also. if you got hard topic, google it or else ask your friends or your instructor for some advices.
My strategy is, just memorized the points you gonna elaborate later during the speech. with some softskills you learned before and proper voice projection, trust me you can make the speech looks better and fade away your nervousness. just remember, when you are in working environment later, you need to face alots of stranger. so from now, you need to learn to chase away your nervousness. just practice alots as it will make you perfect later.
thanks :)
Assalamualaikum..
yes, for sure my first time give a speech infront of people i felt very nourves. not just nourves, but im felt very shy also. i dont know why the things happen, because before i goes to present, i have a full of confident. but when my turn cames, then i stand at the stage, im blurring. i dont know what to say. yes that is the big problem for me. im just acting cool but yes for sure no one knows about what im feeling. i had many points but i explain the points in a line of speech. i cant elaborate them. so i think i need more practice and more support from everyone. i hope next time
In fact I used to be a very nervous speaker myself, but over the years I got a little courage and I was able to become comfortable speaking in public. I used to find it very difficult for me to speak in front of a group of people more especially if in a formal way. But on some occasion this happens to be and all kinds of fear come to me when I have to speak in public and I have a total nervous breakdown, making me sweat, swallow words and sometimes I stammer and I end up forgetting what I had planned to say leading to a disastrous presentation, I tend to lose focus and can’t make eye contact, when this happen I try to calm myself down by thinking about happy memories. At times I just imagine that the class is empty if I am in class or I just think that no one knows me I am a total stranger it’s the first time they see me. Sometimes I think of something funny that makes me laugh and all those sorts of thing help boost my confidence. At times talking slowly helps to get the words out clearly and I get to give myself sometime to think of what to say next thus boosting my confidence and overcoming the nervousness.
madam..i remember this article when i take engb subject with you madam.So funny when see other people try to hide their nervous feel to the audience.But when it happens to me gotcha!!now i understand why people are nervous when first time stand in front of the classmate and give the in prom to speech.They feel their classmate like lion that gonna eat them.
My first experience give the in prom to speech is like whole of my body are rigid and my mouth has no strength to give a speech.But after has been a few time being call and give in prom to speech.i feel more confident than before.
But that is me at 3 semester before.Now i'm take the subject ITCB with madam also.haha.the fact is,after a few month had a less and less practice on in prom to,my nervous become higher like my first time give a speech in front of my classmate and madam.In addition,last week madam says that who speaking in BAHASA when class start till the end will be called as the speakers.That procedure make be more be careful now and then because i has been traps to become next speaker after jimmy.hahaha..
hope that i can give the best in prom to speech this wednesday.thanks madam.
written by
fareez
I'm 21 years old but I still encounter with this kind of problem when speaking in public. I'm not shy, and can start speaking with new people easily. But when it comes to the public speech I do not know what happens with me. I forget words, thoughts get confused in my head and I become nervous.
Luckily, I realized just now that I'm improving my public speaking skills because my first experience was terrible and I don't want to recall that case :) With every speaking in public I become more confident and less afraid of speaking.
One my lecturer advised me to rehearse the speech in front of mirror. I think that is the secret of perfect public speech.
salwa said....
Salam Mdm Zue,
NERVOUS? Yes,that's me..somebody call out my name and ask to present in front of the class was the most horrible thing in my life..no confidence,afraid of grammatical error and so on...i did prepared for the presentation today,but i dont't have any idea why i became so blurred in front of the class.. that's me..yes,i do frustrated with your comments on my presentation..At first place,i was very down. I did the slides,arrange the words and suddenly i can't speak out :( but i took it as a challenge as it is very important for me to speak out,especially for future,during interview session to get a job.
TO deal with the nervousness was on me. Yes,i'm the one.Some people said to avoid fear,do some practice in front of mirror.Keep on practising.Don't give up.Nervous in public was perfectly natural,i just have to faced it..or else i might end up won't be able to develop myself
Thanks Mdm.
When I was in school I almost passed out from giving speeches in front of class. Put me in front of a group, standing up mostly, and ask me to talk and I'm on the verge of a panic attack. I don't really like it. Being the center of attention was always a negative thing for me, everyone looking at your flaws. Just something implanted in me from lack of self esteem and lack of confidence.I would love to be able to get over that problem and to speak in front of everybody with full confident.
The nervousness depends upon the factor of statement. Many of us would like to avoid this problem entirely, but this is hard to do. We never work alone, we always work with large numbers of people, eventually we will need to speak in public to get certain tasks accomplished. So from this I have to start learning to speak in front of people and throw away all the shyness.
I remember once when my father advise me how to overcome the nervousness base on his experience because he always give speeches to his staff in the office and when he have to present his job to get few tenders for his projects. He said that we have to rehearse before we present. Beyond just practicing your slide timings, actually visualize and hear yourself while say the words with your slides. You have to see yourself in front of the crowd and rehearse your presentation to a variety of audience reactions, both positive and negative. Self talk is also very important, anxiety grabs onto self-critical talk such as “I’ll do a terrible job. What happens if the slide show fails. What happens if they don’t laugh at my jokes.” Your task is not to feed your anxiety with this type of talk, but to change it into “I know I can do this. I will follow my rehearsed plans.” Other than that, you have to calm your brain’s fear center with slow, deliberate breaths with slightly longer exhales. Slower rhythm can be helpful. The most important steps to avoid the nervousness is to deliberately practice. Practice your beginning, identify the concepts of your presentation, and practice, practice, practice—out loud. These techniques work, and I use them myself as well during my presentation. But most of the times it doesn't work as planned because of the left-over of the nervousness.
I also remember once Madam Zue told us how to avoid the nervousness, you have to set your mind that these audience are all your friends and they will not judge your presentation but they are interested to know more about the whole topics that are being presented.
So, from today onwards I will keep on practising my public speaking and improved my body language while communicate with the audience.
hye gud evening madam,
nervous speaker ???? totally agreed with your post madam, one of my big problem nervousness or to faced people
I never really thought of public speaking being the number one fear of humans, but I couldn't agree more. I hate public speaking, I get tensed up and when its my turn, Im afraid,shivering, lack of knowledge will keep on interrupting makes me avoid myself by speaking or express my ideas . When i get in front of a group of people i tend to blank out and not know what to say next.
during the speech, if i got stress or nervous while looking at the audience i will try not faced them and just try look for other different points,
so to solve this problem i really need guidence or encouragement from madam
wish me luck and i will do my level best to solve this nervousness
every first time speaker usually get nervous when talking to public. after several practice to speak to public,he or she shall overcome this problem. for me,I'm not nervous when speak in Malay in public but when speak in English,it really make me nervous. my nervousness came from my lack of practice in speaking in English plus i'm not really fluent speaking in english. i just hope that i can improve my english before i graduate from Uniten
wedyan
Hye Puan Zue..
In spite of the development of civilization we have reached, but the stress and nervous system become a disease of the times everyone suffers from because of the negative view of society and interest in excess words, people and their views, which have become elusive as the fear of the future and not to accept the current situation make many turn to convergence. From my point of view I follow a clear path in my life always makes me optimistic is fatalism Will not happen to us except what Allah has decreed for us. This is grown confidence in myself and makes me more realistic and paints a smile on my lips So I meet people with love and satisfaction .
Daniel is084525
Greetings everyone, nervousness is a normal thing especially when it comes to speaking in public, or even in class. It is common for one to feel 'butterflies in the stomach' during presentations or speeches as it is triggered by the nervousness.
However, in my opinion, one way to combat the feeling of nervousness during presentations is by having good communication skills. With this, the message that was intended for the crowd can be clearly understood so that is already half of the job done.
Speaking about nervousness, I usually feel very nervous because I’m shy to express my thoughts to other people. Sometimes, it’s very hard for me to start a conversation with a newly met person because I feel too shy especially with girls. Maybe it’s because I do not have the confidence to talk. That’s the reason why normally people think that I’m a quiet person. During the early days of my university life, I will usually freak out when the lecturer calls me to do something in front or if I have any presentation in front the class. But now I think I’m a bit better in dealing with my nervousness in front the class. I think it’s because after all this years, I’ve presented quite a lot of times in front the class and this has become like sort of training for me to control my nervousness. Now I’m bit more confident than last time to come in front and talk. I will follow the official Nike’s tagline which is “Just do it” when it comes to talking to a crowd. I just will go in front and do it.
I think nervousness for me was taken away by what Pn.Zue once told my class. She said, "come well dressed and handsome, in that way you'll be confident of your appearance." I hold on to that and always go dressed to be confident.
Everybody will definitely face nervousness. The nervousness can’t be separated from human being. It is the natural ability that the human have. When I am nervous, I will think of something that everybody needs to face it too. So, rather than I am alone, everybody will encounter the same as me. From there, my nervousness will disappeared little by little, and that’s how I throw away my nervousness.
Assalamualaikum ma`am,
Yes for the first time speaking in front of public im very nervous.This is because im lack of self-confident especially when i must speak in english.hehe
Now I became an active person by join many events just to improve my confident level.For me,to have a confident we must be well prepared and your class madam zue very helpful.Even i look like a quite person in class,actually im trying to adapt with situation.Wish me luck.
-amirrul
Giving a speech in public is totally different compare to when we talk to friends. As my self-experience, giving a speech in public is much harder than what we thought. The hardest part of a public speaking is not the content that we will tell to the audience but our mental distraction that makes us nervous when we face the audience. When we are giving our speech, it comes to our mind that we can’t make even a single mistake or else we will give bad impression to the audience. When this comes to our mind, it often distract our speech delivery progress as we will start to get nervous and forgotten everything that we plan to deliver. When we make the first mistake in our speech, we tend to make more mistake as we start to get nervous and mess up everything. Therefore, try to keep your mind fresh and calm before and during the time delivering speech. This is necessary to keep yourself calm enough to organise your speech properly.
Salam Pn Zue,
Speaking in public can be a problem for many of us, including myself. I have been through several and some of them went well and some did not. I agree that maturity, knowledge and experiences are the key to good public speaking.
I still remember back in my primary school, I had to give a speech and it was a terrible experience as far as I could remember, and later in my high school days, I was a prefect back then and I was given more opportunity to be in front of students to conduct the morning assembly and some events in school. Those experiences actually helped a lot in building my self esteem and confidence level. Now I'm in UNITEN, and yes there are lots of presentations going on.
Presenting in front of people is not the only challenge to me and most of us, to have the knowledge on the topic that we have to talk about is the other callenge as well. We should stuff ourselves with general knowledge and what's happening around us,not just in our country but also globally.
Here are some tips I would like to share with all of you before you begin: take a deep breath, look surround you and then begin whenever you are ready. Remember to distribute your attention equally to all the floor members.Lastly, have confidence in yourself and practice!
Thank you.
a nervous speaker..
i had a lots of experience of this back in high school where i need to debate, speaking in public, speaking with the authority. now I've got a little confident but it is only to the people i've been familiar with. when it come to speaking in the public its not because i can't speak or lack of ideas, it's just because i'm afraid on how the crowd will judge me, what their perception to me, worrying about this thing make the i forget certain word to be used and i the end, i lost my idea to speak. hope i can do well in presentation in the class. plus, i'm not really good in english.
Nervousness is so reflects me. I think that Im nervous in almost every single presentation in my academic history. However, as you said, public speaking is something that we cant ignore. For me, I do practices in front of mirror to gain more confidence. But honestly, I still nervous. So, till now, I still cannot find my on remedy to cure my severe nervousness. I hope one day, I will find one and become one of the confident speakers in the future :)
Nurul Aisha Zainal
I think we need some practice to become a good speakers. the problem that we did not have "public speaking" activities during our school time, and there was no one whom encourages us for such things. This should be the parents and school duty to train the children to speak out, so when they grow up, they will have no nervousness while speaking up.
navarasithen
Yes, I like to tell my experience about my public speaking. As usual like other people I also got nervous when stand infront of alot of people this is because we will feel shy and scared about doing mistake when giving speech. To overcome this problem i will tell my mind to be relaxed and I will breathe deeply.
I admit that i'm really nervous when the first time i speak in front of each other.. And until now i feels that nervousness too when i speakup.
i will do my best next time.
Nervousness. It gets me every time. Until now i still could not manage to find a way to absorb my nervousness fully, be it before a presentation, competition, or even during a presentation itself. You see Im not particularly what you would call a shy person but a nervous one. I have no problems in being in the limelight, but the outcome is the one that always got me butterflies in my stomach. Stuttering is my common reaction, not to mention forgetting what to say, or jumbling up sentences into complete utter nonsense, Ive experienced it all, due to my nervousness. Ill only be confident if I am ready for the presentation. Public speaking itself has shown me that it is to challenge, to conquer all my fears, and be prepared no matter what the situation is. Im still trying, and im not sure whether im doing well or not. If not please forgive me hehee.
Hadje Batoul said :
Speaking in public or in front of an audience waou! Now, that is the living nightmare of most of us. I am not a shy person by nature but when it comes to make a speech or present in front of several people detecting all my moves and waiting for every word that comes out of my mouth to be great, no, no way. I start shaking and speak fast! Sometimes when they ask questions during a presentation, I know the answer very well but I’m just somehow ashamed of myself, ashamed to say the wrong thing, ashamed of people making fun of me so I keep quiet or I just give half of the answer. But I found a strategy to make it work. So during a presentation I pick one member of the audience, let say a less intimidating one or someone that I do know,and I look at that person directly in the eyes through the whole presentation. And guess what it does work and it is better than preparing yourself in front of a mirror.
Furthermore, speaking in public is very important because it teaches us to be more confident and we need to practice for future because once we are working, we’ll have conferences, seminars and all that, so we have to speak up, weither we like it or not. Besides, sometimes we might go to overseas for a conference and we might be asked to give a speech and defend our opinons and convince the public and most of them will be so educated and intellectual people. I think, is very necessary, because me myself, I was not used to it but now each time I have a presentation I will be so excited to talk in front of my beloved lecturer and classmates.
Hey puan zue…
How are you…actually its my first time writing something in blog. This topic is kind of interesting because most of us starts as a nervous speaker. Me myself is not a great speaker so I think this topic reflects me..hahaha… Actually the problem is not only nervous but shyness,lack of confident and also weak in English.
As for me, even if i tried to be confident but my poor english makes me shy and keeps me away from any kind of public speaking and also even rom speaking to any one in english.
thank you
my first encounter on public speaking was horrific indeed.I do still clearly remember the day I spoke on the stage for the first time in my life.I was in standard six and was selected for inter-school public speaking competition.I was having tremendously nervous prejitter before the speech.So what happen was I end up delivering the speech by standing static and my eyes closed.Altough I did not win the competition it was a kick-starter experience for to be a better speaker.So I started to read alot of reading material to prepare myself to deliver speech spontaneusly.I used to practice my speech if needed in front of the mirror to boost my confident.I also started to converse with many people to learn more of perspective diversity.Basically thats how I overcome my prejitters and nervousness in delivering any speech.
Actually everybody is facing nervousness in our daily life. Each and everyone will be getting nervous for something. When it comes for public speaking almost everyone is getting nervous for it. nervousness can be quite incapacitating and leave them feeling terror-struck at a time when clear thinking and togetherness are required. Personally I will feel nervous when I participate in any public speaking. People are getting nervous because of lack of confidence. People tend to lose confident if they don’t have proper knowledge about the topic that they are going to present. I will overcome this problem by study and prepare well about the topic that I’m going to present. Apart from that, new faces cause me feel nervous too. So I will make friends with everyone the moment I go in front. This is how I overcome my nervousness.
Three things that help is practice, practice and more practice. In years past I would become
almost paralyzed with anxiety when I had to speak in front of a group. The most important
thing to remember is that you have to have something that you feel the audience needs to hear.
Something unique that they probably haven't heard before, something that you feel will help
them with their lives. If you feel passionate about your topic you will find that public speaking is
far easier.
I have a several tips that can help during our presentation. First, count to ten as you breathe
in, hold your breath for a count of ten, and breathe out to a count of ten. Keep doing this until
you feel calm once more. Also, say, "I can do this." Say this until you yourself believe this.
Concentrate entirely on yourself doing the task that makes you nervous. Besides, try to get to
sleep early. The earlier you go to sleep, the faster you'll get to go to the place. Also, you can be
active so you can go to bed early the day before. Work out a lot. That way you will be tired and
can go to bed early, which would pass more time, making less worry. Plus, sleeping naturally
calms you and when you have enough sleep, things may not worry you as much.
The unease and butterflies and anxiety we all face, in greater or lesser degree, is a perfectly
normal reaction to stress. The butterflies will come to everyone, partly because you don't want
to appear to be uneducated when you open your mouth. That is the things that I always do when
I need to speak in front group of people. It won't stop the butterfly feeling but it will always kick
in when you actually do get up and speak.
amiruddin
is082709
Yahh, that is the one words i could comment. being nervous is everybody weaknesses that haunt even the most experience public speaking person as going to talk in front of everyone is quite scary and watching all the eyes looking at you without one word. the secret ingredients are, not are but is, is not to look in your audiences eyes and faces, instead look at their lips as you talk as you will know that what you are presenting is getting their attention or not. this secret ancient technique will give you courage and a bliss when you see someone smiling at you while you are talking to them. it is not like they will eat your face if you speak your mind freely right?
being able to talk in front of people gives you perks along the way though, as you will be able to confront and engage a lot of people as the force of confidence lies in you and you might come out with interesting story that you do not even believe. It happened to me in few years back while i were force to spoke in front of a meeting that handled by my friends. While steeping to the front, i were thinking i will be a dead meat as i can't even remember a thing on what i should talk about. The feeling resembled like being chased by a tiger, ready to eat you alive but the different thing about the tiger is he is smilling to you, and you could read his face like "you talk i eat you".
Don't get me wrong as that is the true feeling i had before, the tiger is true though. hehe. In conclusion ones should grab the oppurtunity to talk in front of people as it build the confidence in you, get rid of your shy sickness and talk!
amiruddin is082709
YOU my lecturer, is one of the awesome person! You gave motivate lectures and thoughts for all the people around you, especially your students.
Ma'am,
as a student, i myself have issues that became bigger that resulted into mass crisis that effect how i feel about studying nowadays. The pressure that came along with the crisis make my feet trembled as if i don't find the solutions really quick, i will be a dead meat just trying to solve it. But there's many solutions to choose from eventually, whether you pick the good or the bad ones, depends on the situations actually. It is like a boat ride in the sea, you choose to use a speed boat or just a ferry, a slow moving alternative that resembles the slow actions that you will take. otherwise, you will pick the speed boat la, as it will handled by yourself to wherever destination that you choose from.
so picking the right tools and actions needed as you will have so many crisis in your life, it is just the way you handle it in fast or slow actions, and sometimes the actions will resulted different kind end results. So that's my opinion about the crisis!
Public speaking is like a nightmare for everyone, of course including me. Obviously, nervousness is the major problem experienced by everybody when it comes to speak in public. Add up having little information regarding discussed topic problem as well as not efficient in speaking the language that is being used, nothing good will be happened. To be a good speaker, you have to be a courage speaker. And being courage is not that having no fear, but being able to control their nervousness. Definitely, it is not impossible to transform ourselves to be a good speaker. It can be developed through enough exposure and practices which will increase their confidence when facing the crowd. Furthermore, it is a great advantage to become a good speaker when you enter the working life. As mentioned by Mdm Zue, it have impact on your career, reputation and future. For me, being able to keep calm, having enough information on discussed topic and also able to manage the emerged information are the key to deliver a good speech. Lastly from me, we are the one who control ourselves and are always able to do that.
Assalamualaikum. The last time I was nervous when I sat for examination. Yes. That was the last time. But, the last time I got nervous in public speaking is when my name was called in Computer Forensic class. I was asked to gave a 5 minutes speech about anything, and what just can I do that time is just talk about anything that came out from my head.
When I got nervous, I always told to myself that every people infront me are just same level with me. I was taught in Bahasa Melayu class about how to bear with nervousness. You can try holding something in your hand. insyaAllah, it can lower your nervousness.
Before enroll in UNITEN, I did not know how Important public speaking is…But after known that public speaking is very important for getting good marks and because it’s essential for all companies to pick their employees who are better in public speaking, I start to ask myself do I have problems with speaking in public? For sure “yes “, so what is the problem…at the beginning I did not know why but after a while I start to realize that the problem is I am little shy…any advice?
The first times, when I was practicing the speaking in front of audience I get nervous. Even though I tried so many types of method in order to be not nervous in front of people it was impossible to kill this nervousness. However, our lecturer every time told to us that “other students from foreign countries are not as shy as you, they are active during the class, and they ask questions if they do not understand something”. Listening such kind of phrases every day I ask by myself “Why we cannot do these things that others can do?”, and after that I forget about nervousness and other things that makes me to be nervous, and came to conclusion to practice speaking in front of audience as much as possible. Right now I like to speak in front of people, share my ideas and positions with others when it comes about certain type of topic.
Am not afraid going out in the public and speak.The problem is when I get excited and speak and very about the subject and it turns out that am skipping ahead and mispronounce words.I can see that in the eyes of people.I try as much as I can to prepare and be calm when talking.
while I try to focus and slow down I always end up hesitate and get over enthusiastic.The only solution I have found is to take it slowly and make it like points rather than sentence.
And in the end practice make perfect
fatemeh said...
salam mdm zue..
we should called as nervous speaker as we're a beginner to be a public speaker.When I feel nervous, I will look at my friends who give me a support by their face expression. They smile and excited to hear my speech and it makes me calm.
thanks to Pn. Zue for your support... and giving us a very supporting environment.
-AmernizanHussin-
Assalamualaikum ma'am,
To me, I think im not a shy person or nervous to speak in front of audience. Sometimes, I have a very high confidence. but there is one thing that will make me scared to give a talk. that thing is my english. when i'm in standard 3 until 6, my english teachers always praise me. she said im good with english. but yeah, that time i'm only need to know what is the animals name in english and some nouns. besides that, my school is far from the main town. when i get to start my secondary school, i studied at Sekolah Arab Penuh. so arabic is more important than english that time. then, there is no such thing i speak english and my english broke. haha. when i come here and take engf, i still remember my first speak in front all of my friends. it was bahasa rojak. T_T . i'm so embrassed to my lecturer. but now, after some exercises you give to us miss, im really think that public speaking is a normal thing. and its just me to improve my eglish so i can be more confident to talk with my powerful and beautiful english. thank you ma'am.
-AmernizanHN-
IS085730
Assalamualaikum Madam..
Nervous. This is a syndrome that will lead us to do things that we’re not supposed to do. Sometime the nervous feeling are good feeling that make us more beware or be more prepared. For me, when I encounter with nervousness especially when I’m talking in front of people, I will make a joke so that everyone will laugh. And that laugh will give me spirit and confident to talk. Haha, weird kan? Well, humans are created different from each other. The last time I feel nervous in public when I play football in front of big crowd. I did many silly mistake. I can’t do do something that I usually do. But I talk to myself, if other can do, I also can do. I gain my confident and Alhamdulillah I can play fottball as usual. The secret ingredient that give me strength to conquer my nervousness in public speaking is always be prepared and don’t be too control macho.
Nervous Speaker? I define it as a overcoming the fear of failure. It is normal to happen when somebody has a fear of public speaking. I believe that there are THREE reasons why most speakers get nervous before a presentation. First, is "The Situation" where people not being sure of the reason of their presentation or being in an unfamiliar or awkward setting or situation. Second is "The Audience" where not being sure of the expectations of the audience or being with a group of strangers and lastly is "The Presentation", not being sure of your material or not properly planning and rehearsing.
Just keep two things in mind to overcome this problem. First, even "professional" speakers get nervous and remember that your audience probably is not expecting a lot, certainly much less than you expect from yourself.
Edwin:
Well this is a major issue for any student. I'm a very private person so speaking in public is a big taboo for me. I tend to get really stressed up when I'm suppose to speak in public. The way that I cope up with this nervousness is with preparation the day before. Being prepared gives me the extra confidence that I need to speak. But when it comes to impromptu I usually try to calm myself down by inhaling deeply. I also imagine that I'm speaking to my close friends instead of strange.This has always worked for me.I hope this Technic would be useful to others. p/s try to get as much exposure as possible because the more you do it, the more used to it you will become.
Every time I need to speak in front public, I will get nervous. I got speechless, my hand is freezing and having rapid heartbeat just because feel nervous. The main reason why it happened is because I am not good in English. I also a shy lady. I feel not comfortable if standing in front others. I always envy with my friends who do their best speaking in public. For sure, they also will experience nervousness but I know they must have secrets to control it. Me myself believe that if do practice about something will make give us success. By that, I try to remember my speech before speak it in front other. I think it is the only way for me who do not good in English. But when the nervousness comes, I tend to forgot it again, Now I still look for the best way to cope this problem. I wish I can do my best in future.
salam ramadhan to puan zue :D
i agree with this topic... hmmm...
i think, each of us has a feeling nervous, good when faced with a large audience or presentation in front of the chief or anyone else. Actually, nervousness or nervous is normal, but if excessive and out of control it can undermine your performance in front of the head.
It usually comes when we want to do important things related to career or anything. To avoid it to be something bad, you need intelligent control and overcome it. There are a few step to overcome this nervous, among others, is that we should always be prepared, stay calm before the speech, think positively and focus on what we want to say to the public.
That’s all from me. thank u: D
Nervous speaker? I think most the people are in this category. 8/10 people can be said are nervous to speak up infront of the stage. Most of the people are shy to talk infront of the stage but when talking to their friends, they can talk tremendously.
So, me talking infront on the stage? I think I would give a NO way. The reason is SHY. Even sometimes I talking to someone that is unknown to me, I will also feel shy but not compared to talking infront on the stage. Sometimes I talk to myself “why u can’t talk naturally?”. So, what’s the problem with me? They are all human not monster or whatsoever.
Luckily UNITEN have a course called business English (ITCB) and I have a good lecturer Pn.Zue that speaks with American accent. I admire the way she speaks. I hope I can speak that way as well. In ITCB class, she like to call people to speak up infront of the class. This is the time where I think most the people are afraid the most. Everyone will like “please don’t call me”. Unfortunately, she had called me 4 times since the first day. The moment she call “eugin”, I heart will run at the top speed and starts to panic. Every time when I’m ready to speak up, I will always forget what I have prepared to speak out. Eventually, in 5mins, I only spoke 2mins. I really upset with that.
Lastly, I would like to thanks Pn.Zue for training me to speak up infront of the audience. It’s really important to speak up because it’s very useful in our working time. I hope I can buck up my speaking and communication skills.
“Nothing is impossible”
-eugin-
assalamualaikum madam.......
today i have already...fight my nervous...i already finish my presentation for today conference...
this moment i would never forget because...i made my presentation of such a big conference i think, because there a lot of academician which i can can share my knowledge.
before i start my presentation i think toilet is the first place i have entered. it is over until i have present for my second paper...
Alhamdullilah...
but madam i still got a problem in using a good English language...along Q and A slot i answered the question badly because "berterabur" huhuhu...but i think at least i tried my best ...
that only for today... :)
Assalamualaikum Mdm. Zue,
Here, i want to share about the conference that i have attend along this week (3-5 September 2012, in Sarawak.
After i have present on 3 September 2012. I feel too happy because of my turn over and i already finish nervousness on presenting in front of people. It is because i feel afraid on delivering presentation in English. it is because i know my grammar are too bad, the sentence also are too bad. That is the because that i can't manage to overcome through presenting in English.
Not even in speaking in English, i am also bad in english writing too... This is too bad for me. So i would do as what Mdm.Zue suggest me to writing in this blog but i think how could i want to practice in speaking lots in english...waaaaa...i just can express in writing for this moment...
i need to do someting to overcome this problem of myself... any comment through my expression.
thank you,
mai
Assalamualaikum Madam Zue, I'm Muhammad Haziq Farhan bin Tumaran (AM88101). To be honest, speaking in public is a really big threat for me. I tend to get all nervous and sweaty even before I started talking. My heart thumped so fast when it's about speaking in public. One of the ingredients i used to overcome my nervousness is to make the least eye contact possible. Speaking in public weakens my state of mentality. I often felt like giving up my speech, drop everything and run away. But i just can't lol. Truth be told, deep inside of me I was having quite a good time trying to deliver my speech recently during class ( i'm a first timer lol ). Tried my best to give out the best out of me on the hardest topic ever received by mankind lol. Whenever i was given a task to speak about, i will ask myself, "What will I benefit from this in the future?". Well that kinda helps me a lot. For sure, with great speaking skills, I'm able to convince my manager, clients or even customer in my carrier. My life would be better. That's all from me Madam Zue, thank you and have a nice day :)
Greetings Madam Zue,
As you requested, in one paragraph…
Well, here goes~~
To most people, including myself, public speaking is rather difficult. Not only do you need to muster the courage to talk in front of a crowd that may or may not judge you, but you also have to explain to your audience in close vicinity about the topic at hand. Apart from that, you have to exact the contents of your speech correctly or else it may lead to unwanted misunderstandings among your audience. Public speaking is undeniably horrific for I am a perfectionist. Every time I stand in front of an audience, there is this little voice inside my head that says “What am I supposed to say?” or “Am I doing this right?” or “Are they even listening to me?” or even “Are my contents correct?”. What I say and do in front of the audience matters; well, as most of you know that being judged by what you say and do is rather frightening. It doesn’t matter how many times you have done a speech or any type of public speaking, you will always have the feeling of butterflies in your stomach; I know I do. I found that there is nothing wrong by being nervous, for by being nervous shows that you have fear, and by having fear, you will want to overcome it. In a way, being nervous before, during and perhaps even after a speech will help train you to do better in your next speech by making you want to improve yourself either consciously or sub-consciously. I always feel nervous when I speak to a crowd, whether if I know the audience or not, I am well aware of this and I say, I am afraid, I am nervous and I might do something wrong in front of everyone, SO BE IT!. One thing I’ve learned from experience; EXPERIENCE is the best teacher, in this case, doing the best in any of your speeches or public speaking whatnot is a very good experience, it does not matter if you make a fool of yourself, so long as you do your best and always aim to improve yourself because, tis all in your head. So, shrug off the nervousness and overcome it, don’t let it conquer you.
Great article Madam Zue.
For me, public speaking was a terrifying experience. I would always have an intense feeling of nerves and butterflies in my stomach whenever it was my turn to give a speech or deliver a presentation. This made me try to protect myself by either avoiding public speaking or by struggling against speech anxiety. At first it was working great but I slowly came to understand that I was merely tricking myself into making the fear of public speaking more chronic and disruptive. I knew I had to overcome this fear one way or another. The only thing was, I didn't know how until the day I enrolled in UNITEN. The English courses here have really made me want to improve and develop my public speaking skills. Overtime, I realized that practice was the best remedy to overcome my fears of speaking in front of an audience. The more I practiced the more confident I would get. The more I did it, the easier it became. I am proud to declare that today I am more confident than a couple of years back although I must admit that I am still not 100% free from being anxious and nervous during a speech. I still get my points jumbled up and most of the time make a fool of myself. Oh well, sometimes you've just got to learn to take'em on the chin, move on and never give up.
With that being said, I wish everyone the best of luck.
Like everyone else, there is always a first time for everything. I’m sure many talented speakers who have accomplished what they have today have encountered this when they first started speaking. I too, had this ‘nervousness’ when I got called to speak in front of the entire classroom by my English teacher for an oral presentation back when I was in secondary school. I was quite a shy person back then so I didn’t mingle much with my classmates and when I had to share my words in front of over 20 people in a classroom, I started to panic and my palms began to feel all sweaty. For the first minute I stood there blanked out, it was as though as every word I wanted to say were stuck in a chain of thoughts and I just couldn’t utter a single word. It was hard on me to see the puzzled looks of my classmates which just added on to the pressure. My teacher then took pity on me and told me to present another day, I nodded and quickly rushed back to my seat and that was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I could hear the chatters and giggles from the class all laughing at me and I just sat there and wondered why am I the only one suffering from this. Soon it became clear to me that most of my classmates encountered the same problems as well. They all stuttered and some just slurred out the words. Not to be mean but their ‘nervousness’ gave me a boost in confidence knowing that I wasn’t the only one having problems. Soon I got called out to speak again and this time there were a lot of improvements seeing as I was actually able to speak in front of them normally. Not so long ago, after multiple times of speaking in front of public I learned something valuable and it is a phrase I keep telling myself that always gives me a boost in my confidence. “We are all equal, no matter speaking in front of the class nor sitting down and listening to the speaker. What matters most is how we portray ourselves and convey the message we intend to send by our choice of words. We must feel certain of ourselves for them to feel certain of us.” Therefore, confidence is the key to conquering nervousness.
Assalamualaikum Puan Zue…
I think it is a natural thing that always happened to who are beginners in public speaking. It happened to everyone, even me. I think, when attending your class in this semester is the first time I experience speaking in front of people in English. In school, when I gave a presentation about certain subjects, it is always in Malay. Even though in Malay, I also experience the nervousness. If Puan Zue remembers the first time I deliver speech in your class, the speech title is Movie. I think when I go in front of people for my impromptu speech, I felt nervous and many negative feelings come in my mind. My mind says, “You don’t have to deliver it, let other people do it. You can do it next time”. But I’m glad that I push the negative thinking and give it a try. For me, it is an amazing experience. After deliver for the first time, I feel like I want to deliver it again and again. I remember in the first class, when you asked if my friend and I ever experience a public speaking. We said no, you just said just give it a try. You don’t have to care what others think about you. To conclude it, nervousness is natural, you just have to try. If you have used to public speaking, public speaking also can become natural to you.
Thank You.
By: Rahima Ummi Kulsum Nadya
Greeting,puan zue
NERVOUS is a natural filing that will occur if someone is not familiar in that environment
If a human say that he/she never experience nervous in life that mean he/she is not a human .
If you ask me is nervous is a big problem..??
Well, for me nervous is the biggest problem .When your are nervous the possible to forget the information or fact that you want to deliver the speech Besides that, lack of idea or knowledge will be another problem for people like me to deliver a great speech . The reason i'm saying this is because i didn't manage to deliver well in my impromptu speech test . After the session of test is over i was really sad to see the score that i obtain so, i brainstormed on the way to improve my ability on speech .I do some research and get some advise for the senior's and finally i learnt the right way to get the "job done" at that moment i know what every speaker needs is to avoid control the level of anxiety that leads to behavior that diverts the audience's attention.After week's of practice finally i manage to overcome my problem and ready to face my second test which is informative speech
and this time it was group assessment i feel more comfortable this the nervousness was not and thank god every when well..
so, my advice is identify your problem and deal with it as fast as possible and never gave up in order to achieve well in life.
Thank you.
ASSLAM ALIKIM
The Nervous Speaker
When I talk about nervous speaker I remember my first speech on the topic of Salah in front of 30 students in high school when I came to stage I forget! If that I got good experience.
Now I am in Puan Zue class I will happily because the etiquette for Puan Zue it motivates me how to speak in front of public our first problem language problem we need some etiquette how to speak influential without nervous. For example on Friday we see some Khtaip is very famous because they are using special way how to speak in public.
Second problem is vocabulary we need improve the English language I hope Puan Zue accept our request to help us how we improve vocabulary and oppose our nervousness
Hi Madam..
I find this topic really helpful.
I had many experiences of being nervous when I am asked to give a speech in the public. I can't deny that I had butterflies in my stomach during those awkward moments. During those awkward and nervous moments, I would most probably end up forgetting some important points that I am supposed to share during the speech. The best part of it is the feeling of being relieved right after you come to your sit after delivering a speech or presentation in front of the crowd. Nevertheless, all of us are required to speak out our ideas and thoughts at some point of time in our lifetime especially nowadays where we have to compete for everything especially to get a good job where our communicating skills play a major role. So, we have to train ourselves to become a better speaker. It is true that we can't deny the fact that all of us have had this experience of getting nervous during those moments of delivering a presentation in front of a group of people at least more than once. No matter what, if we are strongly determined to overcome this barrier called "nervousness" which is hindering us from sharing our thoughts in the public, we will eventually become a good public speaker. There's where practices comes in. When we are really determined to enhance our speaking skills, we will surely work on it no matter what. People can advice and motivate us but it is again up to us how are we going to apply what has been taught or advised to us. So, it is again in our hands. So, we need to be motivated to become a good speaker in the future!
Greetings Madam Zue,
When we talk about public speaking, I'm sure that the first thing that will strike our mind is the courage to talk in front of a group of people. Fear of public speaking it the most common of all phobias. It's a form of performance anxiety in which a person becomes very concerned that he or she will look visibly anxious, maybe even have a panic attack while speaking. Most speakers and presenters contend with varying levels of public speaking anxiety. You're not alone! Some people try to protect themselves by either avoiding public speaking or by struggling against speech anxiety. In this way, people get tricked into making the fear of public speaking more chronic and disruptive. Feeling some nervousness before giving a speech is natural and even beneficial, but too much nervousness can be detrimental. Therefore, we have to find the effective ways to overcome the public speaking anxiety to be able to speak in front of a crowd. In my opinion, practice is the most important aspect to boost your confidence level to enable you to deliver a good quality speech. Try to practice in front of our trusted friends, review feedback with our friend and make any adjustments accordingly. So, look for opportunities to expose yourself to public speaking and gain more experience because experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking. Another way to cope with public speaking anxiety is by asking yourself, "What am I really afraid of?". By doing so, it may help you to have a positive thought on the public speaking and at the same time you will gain more confidence. There are so many ways to manage the nervousness which can help us to develop our public speaking skills. In a nutshell, accept the challenge and don't be terrified to give a speech in front of audience.
Thank you ma'am for your amazing sharing.
First of all, I always have a thought that the word "public speaking" will usually end up on stage and see who's the best speaker. However, public speaking can end up in a lot of situations. From as simple as giving an introduction about oneself in preschool to giving a speech in a press release, those are public speaking! Hence, public speaking is inevitable in our life. Well, I can't remember when was my first public speaking, but I learn a lot about public speaking during my secondary school. I was so nervous when I give a speech in front of a team of people that my hands are shaking. After couple of months, the nervousness has change to confidence. I guess my way of conquering public speaking is by practice from time to time, as practice makes perfect. Hmm.. I love giving impromptu speech as I can find the confidence from it. I always forget the format of promtu speech and forget the vocabs when I get nervous and get stuck. That's why in my life, I never take part in public speaking competitons. Well, for those who are still seeking confident, you need not to have fluency in language to give a speech in public. Good luck everyone!
I admit I have nervousness while having speaking in the class or public speaking. The nervousness can make me feel desperately if I can’t perform well. Every time I feel nervous when before presentation or public speaking, I always wish that the time of public speaking can gone faster and my hand will like “an ice” before and in the public speaking. My minds will become “blur” and stuck when need to think while having public speaking. It’s like having something have stunned me and make me feel embarrassed. The only method to avoid nervousness in public speaking is to avoid lecturer’s eyesight. The last time I was in public speaking, I keep talking crap that has come out nothing in minds. I always tell myself not so nervous while giving presentation or speaking, but I can’t control myself. I know the method to overcome my nervousness I have to always practice speaking so that can present confidence while speaking. I believe that everyone can be a good speaker but depend on their method how to face “them”. Other than that, I also believe if we work harder, we can get more experience of speaking. I think I have to try more and giving more effort while practice speaking and I would like thank you to Pn.Zue giving us chance to speak.
Hi,everyone =)
Let me think... I can't remember when was the last time I got my nervous in public speaking already. Maybe is in Puan Zue's class recently? What I did when I was nervous in public speaking is I will keep on telling myself not to nervous, try my best and the public speaking will gonna end soon. I will also try to do more face emotions to let the audiences think that I'm not nervous at all. Breath deeply is also a good way to start the speak. That's all. Thank you. =D
Presentation and public speaking making me sick most of the time, it became worst if it is in English. Nervous, anxiety, stage phobia and low self-esteem, you can name it anything that you want, it’s came instantly when talking about speaking in public. I still remember, the first time I speaking in front of my classmates in secondary school actually I haven’t feeling any kind nervousness that time and I didn’t take it seriously until I join university two years ago, make me realized the importance of public speaking. So I do compare my speech with others and my self-esteem getting very low as I lose my confident to speak in front of them (friends) because they are better than me. I figured out what was the factor which lead me to this problem, and guess what is that? I’m not quite person who loves reading a book, an article and I didn’t even practice with anyone, so how come I’m going to master it. But with the help of lecturers, friends and family I did manage to overcome something regarding this issue and I believe, as I leave Uniten, there will be no more nervous when came to speaking in front of public.
Nervousness was the main obstacle for me during public speaking. I, myself, do not have any experience in public speaking at all. Nervousness was the main factor for me when speaking in public. Nervousness might occur to me due to the number of audience watching me. My character is not to speak too much in the public but when I do I feel shy and nervous. This might cause due to my lack of communication and socializing skills. But it all changed when I was enrolled in the ENGF 103 class in my university as a part of my course structure. Puan Zue gave me all the tonic and boost I lacked to perform my public speaking skills and I proved that I am a good speaker through the Impromptu speech. Through many practices, I found out that nervousness it not at all an obstacle for me during public speaking. Now, I am not nervous when speaking in public and I am even more confident and developed leadership skills.
The Nervous Speaker ?
Yes I do feel nervous when it comes to speaking. Especially when speaking in public. Nervous conclude of shyness, lack of confidence in myself and my speaking, and forgot things that I wanted to say when only stand in front of public and fear. Once I feel all kind of nervousness, my hands and legs will be shaking in front of public as though in doing shuffling in front them. HAHA!!..
The nervousness grows, even before my turn to speak in public. But once my turn has arrived, I bear with everything around me and just go with the flow. Most of the time, even if I have more points in my speaking, I will finish as faster as I could so that I move from there. And it is perfectly nature. In future, I hope I can do a better public speaking without feeling nervous in myself. Thanks Pn.Zue
The nervous speaker…. Can say that’s me……
This topic brings back the memories of me giving speeches back at school and now at university level. During my schooling days, I memorized my speech and presented it but I always fail to convey it in proper intonation because my nervousness always ALWAYS conquered me. There were still tremors in my voice and this cause my voice volume to decrease to a level where my classmates sitting at the back of the class can’t hear me clearly. Then I changed my strategy by presenting on topics which I have interest and more knowledge on. This really helped me to reduce my nervousness. I’m sure no matter how professional speaker we are, there is always this bit of nervousness somewhere in us right?
As what Puan Zue mentioned above, there are loads of tips to combat nervousness. But I would say the remedy actually develop with familiarity. The more we take the initiative to go in front and give a piece of our knowledge to the audience, we will get used to not only the nervousness but also embarrassment.
In conclusion, understanding our anxiety further and taking steps to learn proper relaxation and coping strategies is very important. It’s all in our hand.
Why so serious? No worries. All of us are one of a kind!!!
Hi,Pn.Zue...I'm SATISH(AM88092),your student from section 8...
''THE NERVOUS SPEAKER''
Not only me,but everyone tends to get nervous during a public speaking.Actually its so usual.We as a student need to face such situation,not only now but also in the future.It doesnt mean that those who are nervous is not a good speaker.We should remember all good speakers started out as a not so good speakers.It's so obvious.Nervousness can be reduced in many ways.Recently i had my public speaking in class.It was so nice,though there was little nervousness in me.I learnt a lot from my lecturer(Pn.Zue)before we started our speech.It did help me a lot on how to speak in public and how to overcome some problems that usually occurs.If we are nervous,we couldnt deliver our speech well and also the audience wouldn't get our ideas.When speaking in front of an audience,we should not show our nervousness to them and we also should be calm.Besides that,i think we should learn how to attract the audience..otherwise it will be so easy and fun.I can say that practice makes perfect.This will help us to become a good leader in the future.With ENGF103,I am confident that i will be a better speaker in the future..Thank you and have a nice day..!bye..
I'm definitely a nervous speaker of public speaking . I will feel nervous , shy , fear and lack of confidence when standing in front of the class. I have to say that nervousness seriously affect me a lot. I still remembered the day of importu speech ... Nervousness made me can't think the points of the topic during the three minutes preparation. When I went in front and ready to talk I realized that my mind just went blank even the speech of greeting to my lecturer and friends I also made mistake !!! My nervousness increased and I not dare to have an eye contact with the audience. After a while my anxiety only get away from me but I still end my speech badly . However , I met a very nice lecturer and I get her encouragement after that. I felt relief. I believe that I will have some improvement by the end of the semester . Hopefully ........:D
Yee Shuen ^^
It is been a while since I did not give a public speaking in front of the people. And it causes me feel nervous when I have to speak in front the others. So, to make me feel less nervous, I try to practice myself at home. During the evaluation, I saw most of my friends get the same topic as I found in the internet. So, I thought I am also gonna have the same topic as in internet. But, unfortunately I got a topic that I have never seen before and my topic is very hard for me. Then, I became blank about that topic. When I write my outline, I also do not know what my point is. I just write only. Suddenly, when it is my time to give public speaking, I became blanks for the first. I just say hello everyone in class and suddenly I feel like my mouth just talk itself. I became comfortable with the situation and I just said about anything that came out from my mind. When I finished, I realize that all the things that I write is totally different from what I said. Haha. Maybe that is the power of my nervousness.
Hi Puan Zue. I guess everyone will be nervous when they have to do public speaking for their very first time. For me , when it's not my turn to speak , I have tons of idea in my mind and when it's my turn to speak , my mind would be blank and my tons of idea will disappear itself and mess up all the things. To overcome this problem , I have found that when we were doing public speaking , we should not have too much eye contact with the audience and take a deep breath before we walk to the stage.
Nervousness is my obstacle in my life. Whenever I had a public speaking that kind of feel will apparently appear in my action carried with unconscious mind. Do not think those successful speakers can make it just in one day because they keep on practice during their past. So, do not compare with your own selves and them all. Today, I would like to share my experiences when I was having a public speaking to the public. Which human being does not have nervousness in their life??? I don’t think so; everybody carried nervousness whenever they had awkward situation or unfamiliar condition. I would like to give me first point is lack of practice. Lack of practice in public speaking could make you feel nervous to the public. Even though, they are my friends and my lecturers. However, a person unfamiliar to the topic those given by the lecturer are unable to think and speak properly. For example, during my high school days my class was having a public speaking almost every week once. Initially, it was annoying because I need to think the point and elaborate widely. If the point and explanation were too short but then the remaining time are still long from the time that you predict will make you feel that it’s ridiculous and keep on asking ‘How long I need to finish it???’. But then, I was kept on shaking my legs or using a gadget to make my hands keep on carry out a task. Other people might think that I was rude or unserious because I want to relieve my stress and nervousness. Soon, the things keep on going smoothly. I been called for many times to present whenever they gave me the topic to the present it to everyone. Sometimes, I have an unfamiliar topic that totally makes me feel depressed. Recently, I was surprised that I was able to present it to the front. Even though I still nervous during the presentation. The thing we need is just courage and a confident spirit in your mind. I would like to deliver my knowledge to everyone that I had. You could imagine that audience is not in front of you and just a wall surrounded to you. Meanwhile, you just delivered everything that you had in the presentation. However, the key of success to become a powerful speaker is persuasive, courage and confidence. Without these three of the element you are unable to resolve your nervousness and trauma during having a public speaking. Therefore, what you need is courage, confidence and persuasive to conquering your nervousness.
Great article Madam Zue.
As human being fear is a feeling all people share it. Specially when we do things for the first time, we all think “what if I did it wrong, what will happened my friends will laugh at me” I think most of us had done this and this is the common example “speaking in public” for me it was terrifying and panicking, when they call my name I feel like I am presenting front of a president of university this is what I feel about, the problem all the audience are my friends and I know most of them but when I stand front of them I get nervous ,start sweating and shaking my hand, the words choked in my mouth but all this in the front of 20 people of my classmates, then I say to myself I am getting nervous in a class what will happen In the future if I talk front of more than one hundred people I cannot imagine myself in that moment. But I have learnt from my lecturer and from lots of people in university and out , how I can killed the nervous feeling and be a good presenter on all my presentation in the future.
Majority of us would have the first experience to speak in front of public, either a big or a small group. In fact, many people may be fear for the first time and some may be very excited to present in front of the group. However, public speaking is the greatest fear for me, it makes me to the top level of speech anxiety like the end of the world. There was one incident that I could still recall vividly, which happened about seven years ago. That was my first experience to speak in front many students in a hall. I was too panic and felt like vomiting until I forgot my speech. At the end, I had to leave the stage. I felt ashamed and in desperate. Again, I have to speak in front of the classmates this time. I am even more nervous since we have to speak in English. I am worried as I am lack of confidence and not used to speak in English. This time, I had my individual public speaking. I was still facing the same problem. Before reaching my turn to speak, I felt rapid heartbeat and butterflies in my stomach. When it came to my turn to pick my topic, I am worried that I do not understand. Fortunately, I am very lucky that I understand the topic that I have picked. On the other hand, my nervousness made my mind blank and could not think much. After the three minutes of preparation for ideas, my paper was lack of points. I felt shaking and sweating. But, I still had to speak. I started my greeting in squeaky voice. I just tried my best to speak whatever I had in my mind at that moment. After this experience, I told myself that I must work hard to overcome my anxiety. I must practice umpteen times as the saying goes “ Practice makes perfect”.
Thank you :)
Assalamualaikum puan zue.
After i read you article, i agree that first time experience to be a presenter is kind of hard. I want to share some of my experience. Back to my diploma-hood, I have to present in auditorium with hundred of students. Its my first time having that situation. Im a bit nervous because its a huge hall for me to present. Of course im very nervous and it become worse when audience interfere my presentation with a question. Its hard for me to get back in line. Such a waste. On the next year, i have to present againi in the same medium. That time i really want to present in very confidence way. The first step i take is manage my presentation. So i can run my presentation smoothly even someone trying interfere my presentation. During my presentation, i believe that loud voice will attract people to hear my speech, and afraid to ignoring what im about to deliver to them, besides, loud voice will make us talk confidently and clear for audience to understand our speech. For me, confidence is the best way to be a good presenter. Confidence can be achive if we manage our presentation, and can talk loudly and clearly to audience. Knowledgement is a must for us to gain attraction from audience.
Hope some of my experience can help others to improve their skill to become a great presenter. I also will improve myself and together we achieve success in our life. Live your live, make it great. Thank you and wassalam.
Nervousness always happen to everyone, it does not matter what gender they are or their age because, extreme nervousness happens when we go up infront of a crowd or having an interview.
Normally, nervous blood can be felt with the nervous beats of the heart. The nervous blood or in Malay “Darah Gemuruh” is a feeling that cannot be controlled by your mind or body, some people tend to sweat while trying to cover up their nervousness. Thus, in my opinion, there are several steps to handle the nervousness. One way, is to prepare thoroughly and tell yourself whatever you do wrong, just accept it with an open heart. This way, we can calm our minds and relax to make ourselves better.
Stuttering, trembling, and sweating are common when a person is in a nervous condition. Public speaking is one of the factors that could create this nervousness. Why does this occur? It is because the speaker could probably lack of social skills, and not having enough confident in using the spoken language. In order to solve this problem, I do think that having enough practice and knowledge about the topic being spoken is indeed the best alternative. As a result, the nervous habit can be reduced.
For me, the nervous feeling that happens when people was going to give public speaking is a normal thing. The lack of practice is one of the reasons for this nervousness problem to occur. For the people that have experiences in giving public speaking, the nervousness also came when they are about to start talking. After a few minutes, the nervous feeling will be gone and the confident feel will increase. For me, there is some ways to stop the feeling of nervousness which is first; drink a glass of water before doing the public speaking. It will make you feel a little bit relax before doing it. Shout out loud before doing the public speaking also makes people feel more relax before the moment of doing it. That’s all.
Nervousness always happen to everyone, it does not matter what gender they are or their age because, extreme nervousness happens when we go up infront of a crowd or having an interview.
Normally, nervous blood can be felt with the nervous beats of the heart. The nervous blood or in Malay “Darah Gemuruh” is a feeling that cannot be controlled by your mind or body, some people tend to sweat while trying to cover up their nervousness. Thus, in my opinion, there are several steps to handle the nervousness. One way, is to prepare thoroughly and tell yourself whatever you do wrong, just accept it with an open heart. This way, we can calm our minds and relax to make ourselves better.
Yes i am a nervous speaker. I'm always think that people look down at me every time i stand in front of the class.My level of confidence is still very low because I'm not in higher level of cleverest people, i'm in the lowest for right now. Everytime I give the speech, my heart beats fast.
My last experience on presentation is when I'm in Semester 6 (Diploma) in German Malaysian Institute, i'm presenting about my Final Year Project which it is about Forensic pendrive. I'm a bit nervous because i am worried about my performance on that project. And I'm worried about my marks that will be given from the lecturers. I'm targeting A for my Final year Project, but at last I got B+ :(((
For this Business English classes, I will trying to do the best. I will never look at the people,just kidding,hehe... I will also do my best on the assignments so that I will get the good marks(maybe).
My mom is really good presenter in his office which it is in UKM. I will follow her steps, and her attitude. I have my own weakness on speaking, which is I can't say it here.hehe.....but trust me, i'm always to fight that weakness.
Wish me luck for this Business English okay mis... I'm targeting A for this interesting subject. =)
- Ann
Janus Gerard Patrick said...
Public speaking was a new experience for me knowing that I have not entered competitions of any sort. Being in front of a group of audience was a frightening moment for me. All I could think about were those judgemental eyes. Fear that they might be mocking me as I was to express myself. Ultimately fear was my one true enemy. How did I resolve it ? By avoiding eye contact, in which later proved to be vital. As a speaker, one has to be both confident and brave up front to be able to convey your thoughts to the people present. Hopefully, with time and exposure, I might be able to work on my flaws and be more confident to speak up and voice out my opinions to the public ! Thank You.
Nervousness, is it really the main problem? Or could it be something else? Nervousness is described as the anxious feeling you have when you have the jitters, thanks a lot to Google for that. Personally, I do not think it will create huge problem to speakers. Well, how often we hear that nervousness is good in order for people to do the best? I am Shafiq, and my point is fear. Fear actually a bigger concept of how we define things in term of feeling. We are afraid to try new things, we are afraid how the result will look like, and we are afraid of the reaction of the listeners. That is the things that always stuck in the head of each speaker. For me, we are just too scared to try. I had my own experience in dealing with it. A classroom monitor, a person who have the trust from teachers to be a leader for classmate; or in simple word, a leader. Back in school days where I was forced to take that position, I am not quite sure how to handle it. I had to speak or talk to others on behalf of teachers and always being pushed forward to say few things when there is occasions that need us to speak. “What should I do?” or “Is this a right way of doing it?” often hovering in my mind. But, high chances of becoming the first person to be blamed for anything certainly push me to rise above the fear. I keep myself prepared in doing things and predict what the result will look like. Knowing that your friends are count on you to do the job will actually drive you to do the best. When there is need for me step up and give a talk or something, I knew I can do it because I have encountered the fear that told me to stop trying. It always tastes good when sweet come after we face or going through the difficulties. A good speaker not always relies on text or preparation, but the confident to do it, which is to speak what they want to say.
Being able to speak in front of huge audience has never been my cup of tea. I, myself am a shy person in personality and always resort to keeping quiet just not to get unwanted and not to mention, unnecessary attention. However, when an opportunity presents itself in ways which it cant be denied or refused, especially if it is regarding of my grades, it leaves me no choice but to pull up my socks and face one of my biggest fear. I strongly believe that practice makes perfect. During my early years through high school, an opportunity presented itself for me hone some valuable skills in speaking upfront. As expected, it started off with the worst possible results, as this was very new to me. I shivered, froze, was mentally blocked, and just could not mouth out even the simplest of words in the english language. Frankly, it brought me to a point where i just wanted to write a passage and memorized it to make things simpler. Fortunately i was coached by the best teacher, whom helped me overcome my fear by just doing it frequently in front of a crowd, stage by stage, where from a group of close friends, the number rose to an entire classroom and eventually an assembly of students. Throughout this chain of training my teachers put me through, i could only infer that as time passes, i got the hang of it and was no longer afraid or nervous to give a speech in front of a crowd. Of course the regular jitters will be there, and i believe it will be there but it reduces once the confidence grows even stronger. There is of course a milestone for me to go in enhancing my speaking skills but i surely hope that my experience in overcoming my fear of speech in front of an audience would have helped a few if not many of you all out there. Again, i would like to stress that 'Practice makes Perfect'.
Cheers :D
Hi Zue, Jes here.
Public speaking has always been a talent in my family, especially in my 2 elder sisters as they realized their gift and acknowledged it in a younger age. My sisters were famous during their schooling time as they went for competitions on state and national levels, while I didn’t quite see myself as a public speaker as the stage fright always caught me. I would just freeze on the stage or when I was brought in front of an audience to give a talk. As time flew by and I gained my first work experience as a sales representative when I was 17+, I started to acknowledge the talent that was within me as I noticed I was very good at talking and convincing people to facts. After that came my college life where I was required to interact with more people at an intellectual level, this polished my skills but not to an extend where I would like to volunteer myself. The point where I got really good with my public speaking skills was when I started to interact with my international friends. At that moment I really developed my skills and killed the fear that was holding me back all this time. I caught up with the right English pronunciation. I started to watch more English shows whereby I caught up on new terms and expanded my vocabulary. Today I am a guy who loves to talk regarding any topic that pulls my attention as I am well prepared and have nothing holding me back any more.
hye Pn. Zue..i'm Aqmal Ikhwan Bin Abdullah (AM88120) from sec8..
for me, nervousness are always my biggest enemy for each time that i'm going to do public speaking..there is always have a butterfly keep flying all around my stomach..this feeling kill me each time i'm doing public speaking because i tend to lose all words, contents and it will be hard for me to think very fast..i'll be sweating a lot and experienced a little bit shivering..i can always mingle around with everyone but always scared whenever i need to stand in front and do public speaking..after i have read your post it help me a lot..i really hope that i can be a good public speaker..thanks for sharing Pn. Zue.. :)
Hi,Pn.Zue
The first time heard there got a “Public Speaking” class and its sound like a very scary class. Why? It’s because I afraid to talk in front of the people and didn’t know about how to talk with such broken English. Before I enter the class, I felt very nervous and I always tell my friends that I was very afraid to go in the class. At that time, everybody also same with me and we were so worry about that-“Public Speaking”. I still remember that the first time I had been chosen to talk about “Two Type of Ghost That I Want To Meet”. At that time, I was no idea about it and I heard that I had been chosen to talk about it. I felt that I was so afraid and later how I was going to perform it well. When I went out and stand outside, I felt my heart bit increase and no idea to talk. I started my topic and many words that I wanted to talk couldn’t come out and the sound “Erm…Erm…Erm…” always came out. After that time, I tell myself that I must think positively and say to my mind that I can do it well. Next, we must practise a lot. So that, when we talk will be more fluency. Pn. Zue also tells us that when we come inside the class, we can’t be ourselves already. Now, I felt better before attending the class and also learning how to perform in front of the people well. :)
Thank you for giving a chance to publish my experience..
I would always feel nervous and fear whenever I speak in front of everyone but I always wanted to be respected by my fellow mates. English is a language subject which made my life terrific since young. When I enter UNITEN, everything is changed. Pursuing my studies in UNITEN was the toughest part ever. The first time when I enter my English class, I felt nervous and it was not because of the language but due to the word “give speech” by my lecturer. I tried coping up with the reality and decided to accept the challenge because the subject is basically about public speaking. The first time my name was called out to give a speech, I felt very depressed until I could able to feel my hands shivering when I stand in front of my friends. Another tragedy was the MUET exam. I was pressured to get band 4 as it was the eligibility to continue studying in University. I burned the midnight oil by reading dictionary to know some new words and gain some knowledge in public speaking. In addition, I use to speak with my friends to make my English even better. Despite that, I asked my lecturer for tips to overcome fear and nervous when speaking in front of everyone. So with her tips, I improved more and I realized that practice is the key to make a man perfect and more confident. There is a phrase known “if there is a will, there is a way” which suits my life. I would proudly say that UNITEN had changed my background and life style. Even though sometimes I brave enough to talk, I’ll find myself ran out of idea whenever I try to go flawlessly. Whatever it is, life has to go on, fear of speaking won’t be a problem for me to sustain in this globalize world. Nobody is perfect; I’ll try to strive for the success to become perfect.
I believe that every single person has encountered nervousness at certain point in their life,especially during speech giving, having a meeting or presentations. When this thing happens, you can't really sit still and your hand or foot will start to fidget. I am familiar with it as it has been haunting me my whole life. During my primary school life,I have always avoided events such as speech giving and stuff because it will always end up making me feel nervous and this has been brought on until now. Then I realized we can not run from it forever because eventually we have to face the music. As to what the article said speeches and presentation is unavoidable as it plays an important roll in our lives. And right now, I am struggling hard to find a way to overcome my nervousness.
Ammar
I’m not use to speaking English in front of many people. Furthermore, I don’t have experience too. At my past School, there are not many student can speak English, we used to speak in Malay. When I speak English in public, I always pretend to look at the eye of people in front me, that the way for me to fell better and not nervous.
SURES AM88075
The feeling of it actually makes me to overcome my nervous issue especially standing upon infront of the audience. It was an embarking journey that manipulated my perception thoughts on public speaking before I begun my adventure to gather the attention. Surprisingly, the fear that developed in me vanished within moments after the climax of my speaking due to my confidence level is on its peak. Besides im able to bring the speech flawlessly without any lacks of idea, instead I was ambushing the public with words unconsciously. Besides, when I looked at the topic, my body and mind starts to trembling subsequently, afraid that im not able to generate ideas on the speech im about to give.Hence, I took a piece of paper to withdraw whatever in my head, I try to distract myself from being nervous by thinking on the ideas that would make my speech adequate enough just for minimum time given. But, as my turn approach, and I stood up. I was able to impress the audience with my extraordinary ideas. It was a good experience.
Everyone do feel nervous in something that they do or perform in their lifetime.For me,one of the most terrifying moments in my lifetime is when called to give an impromptu speech in a public speaking;shiver just runs down my spine whenever I encountered it.Basically,most people experience certain level of speech anxiety nervousness when they tend to talk in front of a group or public,formally or informally.As a matter of fact, public speaking is many people’s greatest fear. The last time I was given a chance to speak in public, I was shaking, sweating and having a rapid heartbeat. What i did to overcome my nervousness is, breathe in and out deeply a couple of times before I go on and for me it was very effective. Along with breathing deeply, I also smiled and convinced myself that I also can accomplish this task to create the feel-good chemicals that internally boost my mind and make me feel more relaxed and calm.What I would like to state here is that through my English class(ENGF 103),I learnt various invaluable things on how to manage stage-freights and control myself.All thanks to my lecturer,Pn.Zue,who gave me the golden opportunity to speak in front of the class and by this I managed to muster all my courage to face the crowd anywhere.Well,looks like we are in short of time.Thats all for now.Thank you.
Assalamualaikum and good morning.
I would like to share my experience. I admit that i am a nervous person. I do nervous in giving speech and public speaking. This is because all eyes are stared at me and it makes me more clumsy, nervous and shy. How I would like to handle the nervousness is i wrote the sentence that I have to talked about in the paper and read it calmly as i can in front of the people.
Hi all,
Everybody will face nervousness during presenting it’ll strong nervousness or ‘nearly 0%’ nervousness. I remember when I was first time speaking in the public in 1994, that was like during my primary school, I was really don’t know to who I’m looking at, what really I’m saying, or how I look like that time, but I keep on talking and still able to finish my talk even it just a short fairy tale story. So there is a point, always know what you want to talk about. May be for a novice, we can start talk about that some something we familiar with or has interest on. Those ways we will never have out of idea of it and can continue talking even we’re are lost the actual point.
Maybe I’m a little bit lucky, because my school keep encourage their student to talk to the public and push our debate & public speaking team upfront, even I’m not in them but it give us the idea.
Some of us face the trouble of using the medium, especially English. I have no exact formula of this, but I do think watching English TV series, reading magazine and newspaper and playing RPG games (please don’t skip the FMV & text) help me a lot. I also listen to English speaking radio (1997 THR, Radio 4 & Hitz) and like to read the lyrics and on the cassette sleeves (not boy-band) . All that will help us to learn more vocabulary, tell us how to interact and how to arrange our word.
Don’t be scared to look at the public, have a place to put our eye on. If there a beautiful girl or a hunky boy in the crowd that’s an advantage for you. Most of the time we feel so tense in front of the crowd, for me I’ll put the idea, they are human to, and put all the seriousness behind.
That’s all I want to share for now, I hope I will help.
That’s all for now folk.
Regards,
A.Halim.Elah
Salam Puan Zue .. And everyone.
Actually I agree with your post “Nervous” the most problem I’ll face when I need to speak in public that’s for me. I'm one of that type of speakers actually because in first semester in UNITEN I prepare very well before my presentation started and then since I were in front of people I felt so nervous, shy and I forget everything I memories maybe because that was first time for me I present . So I have to be stronger in front of people I have to practice to improve myself.
I Wish to improve myself with Puan Zue Inshallah I try my best and study hard fo that .
Thank You .. :D
Salam Madam Zue,
It is a great articles. Almost everyone start panicking when it comes to public speaking. Panicking and nervous is not an emotion that we can control. It appears naturally without notice. When it came knocking to us, we would suddenly notice our heart pumping and palms sweating. Or worse, we could struggle with emotion and words. Being nervous is not totally a bad things, it make us learnt to control our emotion and body gesture to cooperate to the current situation. Nervous make us not to over confident with our own ability yet it will keep us to keep practicing until we are satisfied. Thus, avoid being nervous by trying to make thing easy for being yourself, know your audience and plan your speech. If you can do that, means that nothing to be fear about.
Salam Puan Zue,
Nervousness for public speaking isn’t a new type of worries that have been plant inside each of every people in this entire world. In my opinion, people that are scared to go in front of the crowd are a not person that simply doesn’t know “ENGLISH” but they are not confident and yet they are scared of doing mistakes. Mistakes means they would be humiliate in front of the public and people would rather be saying bad thing and judge them for the mistake that they do. People do a lot of silly things when they are scared or nervous. They even keep forgetting on what they have been studied and what that they have been memorizing. Thus, when they are in front of the public, they would get stunt, sweating and shaking at the same time, it would definitely make them harder to remember anything at all. I remember a movie called princess diaries, when Princess Mia is actually is scared to be given a speech in front of the class, worse when she would puke in the middle of the speech. So, people would just need to work out on their confident level saying “I can do it”, with some practice they could be the speaker of their heart.
Hi Puan Zue.
About nervous speaker. Actually i am one of those many speakers out there who are facing the same problem. My first experience was when i was studying in primary school.
At that time it was really a terrible situation for me. I felt like everyone was laughing at me.
When i finish talking everything was back to normal. i realize that it was normal problem for everybody. My first experience was good but i feel nervous if want talk in public . Actually I can give some really good ideas I guess, it’s just that I couldn't tell it or present it to the people.
Besides that, my speaking skills and English vocabulary is not really good. I think if we have good speaking skills and knowledge it's not difficult to speak in public. So, we have to practice more for us to improve, for example attend a few public speaking competition not just to won the prize but also help us overcome our nervousness and help to build up our self-confidence.
What is Public Speaking? Public Speaking is delivering an address or a speech to a public audience. Public Speaking creates a fear to the entire student. It also creates a nightmare for everyone of course I do to have the fear too. Obviously, nervousness is the major problem experienced by everybody when it comes to speaking in public. Nervousness causes a person to be anxious and apprehensive and it is also a major weakness for everyone. Add up having little information regarding the discussed topic problem as well as not efficient in speaking the language that is being used, nothing good will be happened. To be a good speaker, you have to be a courage speaker, a brave one. And being courage is not that having any fear, but being able to control your nervousness. Definitely, it is not impossible to transform ourselves to be a good speaker in one day. It can be developed through enough exposure and practices which will increase their confidence when facing the crowd. Furthermore, it is a great advantage to become a good speaker when you enter the working life. It has impact on your career, reputation and your future. For me, the biggest way to overcome nervousness and to deliver a great speech is the ability to keep calm, having enough information on the topic discussed and also able to manage the emerged information. Lastly, we have to control ourselves by doing this we could achieve a higher success rate not only during educational period but also during working life.
In this advance technology world many thing can be overcome easily but only nervous still cannot be overcome by human. Nervous can also be described as anxiety which can be find in dictionary. Why do we still feel anxiety although we have many advance technology? Anxiety mainly can be notice from speakers regardless of any places and time. When we are student we sure will be feeling nervous and that include me. The anxiety that come from speakers have many reasons. I will like to stress on the reason of anxiety that come from the audience. Nearly every speakers get nervous when they are require to give out a speech or presentation even experience speakers. The speakers that confidence and look relaxed have simply learn some trick to overcome their anxiety. Most of your anxiety is not visible to audience. You may feel that your body cannot be control and your body start moving by its own. You feel that the audience somehow wants you to fail your speech. Actually you could tell that audience want you to succeed. You know because you have been a audience once. Would you want your speakers to fail in giving speech? The answer is obviously no because you don't want to waste your time to hear that speech. So, be confidence in everything including giving your speech. You sure want to be a successful person in your life. Start now and be brave to take the first step towards your route of success. Speak out your ideas and gain the attention.
Assalammua’laikum Puan Zue,
Well, when read the article you’ve posted about nervousness I’m feeling like want to share about my experience too. Frankly, I’ve been studied at UiTM for 1 year, and been through several experienced in public speaking. When I was there I was given several tasks on public speaking, but everytime I started my presentation I’ll be shivering from top to toe. My hands were shaking and the things I want to present become upside down, I can’t even remembered about the thing I talked about. At first I’m not that scared but as the presentation begin, my nervousness will attacked me. When I was first entered your class, I’ve told you that I won’t be able to speak in front of crowd. But your words has motivated me, you said I’m gonna overcome it by practices. So, I take your words as a motivation for myself. I took some times to practice. Alhamdulillah, on the day of my impromptu speech evaluation, I managed to talk continuously. I guess it’s a good improvement of me and for that I thanked you. The positive thoughts from you changed my perception and point of view about public speaker and nervousness. I’m now become motivated to give speech in front of public and I’ve a high expectation about my future. To be honest, your words you spoke to me were my strength to be in Public Speaking. Thank you Puan Zue :)
William Shakespeare Once Said “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking make it so”. Public speaking is the process of delivering anything about a topic to a group of people.
Nowadays most of the students feel nervous when they are standing in front of an audience. I am one of the nervous speakers, I always struggle to think when I am anxious and my mind just go blank. Even I had prepare all the important points but still, I just don’t know how to elaborate.
There are few ways to avoid nervousness, in order to deliver a good presentation . What I do is I try my best to practice before I going to talk in front. As practice make me feel more confident . I was told to look at people’s forehead if I can’t look at their eyes, and this really helps.
It is just like what Puan Zue said, take it as a one way conversation about sharing your own experience with the audience. There is nothing bad about public speaking, use your mind and will power to overcome the nervousness.
Nervous speaker? Yes, I’m one of the nervous speaker...
When i stand in front of a crowd and try to give a speech, suddenly feel like the word would not come out from my mouth.
One of the reason that i can’t speak in front of crowd is lack of confident. I can sure that many people have the same problem as i am, i think i have to take some time to overcome this problem, if not i should not face the crowd again.
Other than that, my english vocabulary in my “coconut head” are not enough, that is why when i speak my word always repeated, this will make the audience feel i’m not a good speaker...
These are the reason that i’m a nervousness person. I think i must overcome this problem as soon as i can.
"NERVOUSNESS" hmm :/ what I can say about this is, it's everywhere and can affect anyone. It doesn't know place, time or people. Basically everyone have the experience of being nervous. You can just ask anyone around you whether they had the experience of being nervous and everyone will give the same answer which is they do unless that person has a super power ability of not being nervous. As for me, I usually feel nervous when I'm in a situation where I need to give a speech in front of many people regardless whether I knew them or not. There are many ways to overcome the nervousness. One of the ways that I use is by practicing couple of times giving the speech in advance before delivering it on the actual day. Besides that to overcome my nervousness, I frequently mingle around with others whom I seldomly interact with in public. This can help me to develop the braveness to speak to others in public other than to improve my speaking skills. Other than that, I usually take a deep breath and observe the audience before starting my speech as it can helps me to relieve some of my nervousness. As for conclusion, by practising more we can overcome our nervousness and thus deliver our speech with ease.
Hi Puan Zue.
Giving speech or talking in front of people is really a major problem for me. I don't know why but I kinda have 'stage fright' and when I'm in front of everyone, my heart starts trembling and I can't look straight at all. That's why during my impromptu speech last week, I can't keep my head down, I stared at the windows at the back while giving the speech most of the time.
I guess I'm lacking in ideas and confidents. That happens exactly before doing the speech. My mind starts to go blank and nervous starts to overtook my body. To be honest, I don't like reading thick books or novels. I prefer newspapers and magazine more. The main source for me to get ideas and learn English is from reading blogs, websites (mostly using the internet) music and movies. But if ma'am ask me to do a speech on the spot, my mind will go blank and it takes time to get ideas.
I'm trying to fix my 'stage fright' problem step by step now because in future, we need confidents to success. I know I'm writing using only simple words (just like high school standard) but I'll will work hard to fix that matter.
In my opinion, being in your class really build my confidence and thank you so much. I'm Aiman Aqeem (AM88065) .
Nervous speaker?Yes I am.the reason i nervous is because of shy, lack of confident and seldom use english to communicate with other people.
Last time at class session,the pratice is my 1st time doing impromptu speech.that time iI feel very nervous. Although nervous but is a verygood experience for me.
During evaluation, I also feel nervous,but I try my best to do it. Although i’m not doing very well,but i already try it.when i feel nervous during evaluation,i find a way to relax myself. That way is to look to my friend who always make me laugh and it really work. After that,i can give my speech.
After evaluation,i also found my weakness when giving the speech,that is lack of vocabulary and fluency.I will try my best to overcome these problem by read more books and speak more.
Nervousness in public speaking is very common, as we all get nervous in a way or another, by numerous factors which include the extent or depth of the topic at hand, the size of the crowd or audience and so on, some of us have the ability to hide it while others weren't blessed with such ability.
however, regardless of our natural abilities and gifts, as well as our inherited behaviors and the skills we learned from previous experience, as the saying goes, it is never too late to learn.
hence, one can actually learn to improve his/her public speaking skills and learn to counter use the nervousness that comes along with it to his/her own advantage.
there are different types of nervousness, as the nervous system in the human body is concerned, you can have the feeling pf goosebumps and excitement, which is one type of nervousness, which can be either a positive thing or directed into a positive outcome.
then there is the other type which results in excessive sweating, loss of words, increase in body temperature and so on, which obviously is the negative type.
however, in both cases, it all depends on how a person perceives his/her public speech and their attitude towards it as well as the accumulative thoughts about the matter.
in general, you can turn all negative thoughts into positive ones by taking things simply as they come.
there are many ways and tricks that can help ease the pressure of the public speaker, hence make his speak much more efficient, these include simple logical things like studying the discussed (spoken about) topic thoroughly and getting to grips with all the sides of it, also a very good trick is to keep handy notes close by, for recaling the main points that the speaker should ot forget, which can all result in a confidence boost which in turn leads to a decrease in nervousness hence, a good speech!
also, other simple tricks that can go a long way in helping the speaker fight his/ her nervousness include drinking water prior to the speech, relaxing and having a clear mind before the speech as well as taking a deep breath before speaking.
and lastly and most importantly, keeping a positive mindset and fighting inner unnecessary and irrelevant fear.
as a conclusion, a public speaker can be born AND can be made!
Ali Yahia Bakhit, ME084186.
Assalamualaikum Ma'am.
Actually I cant speak well because I'm not good in grammar. That is one of the reasons why I cannot perform in impromptu speech. Furthermore, I noticed that I'm lack of confidence. I'm afraid that people will laugh at me when I speak. Honestly say that I can control my nervous, but somehow I still cant speak fluently in front of audience. I have an idea, but I don't know how to deliver. So I hope, ma'am can guide and support me to speak. Thank you.
Afif Aziz AS87703
Do you have a fear when speaking in front of public? I would guess that if you are reading this, you probably do. For the longest time, I had the same fear. It’s actually not that uncommon. In fact, various studies have shown that the fear of speaking in public is ranked higher than the fear of death. In other words, some people would rather die than have to speak in public. This may sound a bit extreme to many of you but it is the fact that you have to understand. I remember I used to be deathly afraid of public speaking. I was nervous, but that’s a good thing. If you are not nervous about something that you are about to do, you probably don’t care very much, but what added to the anxiety is the fact that I was scheduled as the public speaker, and that comes with a lot of responsibility. My legs would get weak as I made my way in front of the audience. My mouth would tremble as I would begin to utter the first few words. I would sway back and forth or do some awkward things with my hands. I would avoid eye contact at all cost unless I find someone with a smiling face, then I would just stare at that person for the whole speech. Have you experienced these things? It’s not exactly the best experience to have is it? Fortunately, there is a way to overcome fear of public speaking. I’m sure there are plenty of ways of overcoming. Now for people with a severe phobia, professional help may be needed.
Public speaking? Everyone once had an experience before talking in front of a group of people. For my infomation , in order to speak well in front of a group of people. First thing we have to overcome our nervousness. We cannot 100% overcome the nervousness but we can avoid people realize we’re nervous while we’re talking. For example, we shouldn’t shake our legs or hands very often during the talks. Other than that, we should prepare well and practice before we start the talks. Preparation before a talk is very important because it will increase your fluency during the ‘’real’’ talk and also prevent grammar mistake or any other possible problem. Next, speaker also should wear proper entire and maintain eyes contact with the audience and make sure always be the "attention getter”. Speaker who didn’t get the attention from audience will only become a speaker who only talking to him/herself. The objective of a public speaking is to pursue or sharing a knowledge with the audience. After all, we should practice more of the skill of public speaking so that we can easily communicate with a group of people and other people will also understand our topic easily.
Greeting everyone，my case are so different . I am not feel nervous when public .what My problem is when finish one point , I need to think a bit longer to continue next point . That's make my presentation not smooth when I present . After my lecture pn Zue pratices us for few week , I feel that my problem getting better now , the skill that my lecture shown really effective . Thank =)
Hi Puan Zue,
I have to admit that I'm really nervous during the public speaking. Even we have few minutes to prepare before we start but I still think that my preparation and the real talk is different. During the talk, I cannot focus on what I have to say. My mind is like a blank of paper. Thanks to the nervousness, now people think that I can't talk. After all, I go back home and put some effort on practice talking. I try to talk in front of mirror for few minutes. Finally, the second time of public speaking is improved a lot. I know how to transfer the idea from my mind to the audience. Although there's still a lot of grammar mistake and the fluency still not very good at all. But at least I had improved. And I'm looking forward for coming practice during class.
Thank You =)
Assalamualaikum madam Zue,
Nervous speaker??? Yeah ,, I’m the one of the nervous speaker. Actually, when somebody speak in front of others, it make me very jealous to them. This is because I want to b a good speaker as them. Hurm, for me everyone will fell the same feeling which is nervous during speaking. Some people can manage their nervous with their own theory. Every people have their ways to avoid their nervousness according to their personality. When somebody are in the nervous mode it will make their talk turn to boring mood and will affect to the audience mood too. The last time I did my public speaking, during Impromptu Speech in the class. Huh! Its made me very nervous. I did not know how to ‘cover’ my nervous in front of my classmate. I try to did not think too much about it but I can’t. Finally I did it in nervous mood and so sad that I can’t get the best mark for it. But, I will make sure that I did not give up and will improve myself to be a good speaker even though not good as a debaters.
Syahirah Jaffar
Section 9
I definitely have to think about it. You know, think about which break down story to share because I never actually had any! Just joking. I am a nervous speaker but I never had any incident that is worth remembering or mentioning.
I read a lot. I do this to boost my knowledge and hence my confidence. I did all this in the assumption of I won’t be a not-so-nervous speaker in the public, or at least I will be able to conceal it, but alas it proved me wrong.
Though I believe this technique would be useful but I wasn’t able to perform in public as I expected myself to be. Prepared as I am, there always will be a small voice of doubt slowly creeping towards me.
This creep of a feeling tend to shake the very foundation of my confidence. Then as the time crawl passes while I do the speaking, there will be another voice asking what are the audience thinking about my speech, and that my dear friends is when all hell breaks loose.
I came to one conclusion: Thoughts will be my undoing. In regard to this I am currently practicing another method that had been so good so far. Before any speech I take deep breathes and clear my thoughts, focusing only on to the current matter at hand.
I hope this helps anyone who are in the same boat as me.
I cannot say I am an excellent speaker yet but I am happy to say that I am progressing towards it. I must say though, Pn Zue’s class had been a wonderful help when it comes to controlling the trepidation before speeches.
When I heard about public speaking, it feels like I’m going to die. The first symptom is sweating. It's like a nightmare to me and some other people. I admit that I am weak in English but I can understand a bit when people talk using this language. Sometimes when I speak, I will add English to Malay. I’ve tried various types of method in order to confront this nervousness when speaking in front of a crowd, but it was impossible to decrease this nervousness. I will also be trembling when speaking in public; this gives an impact on me. I do not have enough courage to speak spontaneously because there are a lot of things in my mind, as I look at the audience, some are staring at me, some laughed, took pictures and because of that I felt embarrassed to talk in front voluntarily. In the nearest future, I would like to compress this nervousness so that I can speak well in front of a crowd.
II’m also a nervous speaker when they want me to speak i feel like i’m going to die. I’m not just nervous but i also lack of confidence to speak in english. So, when i’m nervous i just imagine that no one else in front of me. It will reduce but still can’t fight about this feeling. I’m try my best to overcome this nervous.
yes i am nervous,shy to face many people,low confidence.my first time speaking in public i was like,what im doing here,panicked then i just give the speech and then just ok fine :)
AHMAD MIFZAL BIN MOHD NAJIB
(AS91667)
Assalamualaikum.
Nervousness,anxiety,trepidate,
quiver.Some of attributes that I found in the person that perform their first public speaking in front of people.
Pn.Zue,
The last time I made presentation my english project to the class in secondary school I felt very nervous and awkward.It is because it was my first time doing public speaking in front of people.
Well,the fact is for someone who is new to public speaking it is like a nightmare on the day prior to presentation.
Furthermore,after completion of the presentation.My english teacher has given very good advice to me that "regardless of the topic, turn the speech into something you love to talk about. If you love music, integrate that somehow. If you love horses, mention something about them. If you love the quadratic equation mention that! Just make it something you enjoy".
So,I need to strenghten my spirit and avoid the nervousness for the upcoming PUCBLIC SPEAKING.
Sincerely,
Your student.
Nervous! it is too common for me as i always forget my words thoughts get confused in my head and I become nervous. I always have this lack of confidence and always low in self-conscious. when i stand up upon the crowd the adrenalin become more higher as the sweat flow frequently likes a water pump. Though, i must learn to speak in front of everybody more frequently as it will boost up my confidence and self-esteem. Upon of that, from the right training of public speaking i will be more confidence and reborn the leadership that will helps me in the future. This will helps me to get many opportunity in many cases to get a jobs from many agencies that flow like a stream nowadays. Many non-profit government agencies will dedicated to find a person with good public speaking to promote their idealism or thinking towards people. There you can learn many things because english is the international communication and maybe when you speaks well in english your chances will be more international and the outcomes will be more unexpected.
by : taufiq hidayat
Hye Puan Zue ..
Nervous ?
yes , i am a nervous person . the nervous feeling comes in various type of condition . one of that is when speak up in front of public . I really sure that many people are very difficult to take part of it . in my secondary school , i was chosen to be a president in a committee . in my committee , i need to speak up to all of student by give a speech to them . on that time , i am really nervous that make my mind stucked to think .i try to improve myself by asking to teachers on way to improve that . plus , to make my technic to speak becomes more confident , i try to learn how to speak with student who had joined debated committee . teachers have a lot of experince , but why i also learn with debated committee student ? this because they have a new experince that can be explore andimprove . finally , after day by day , i can speak up in front of public nicely .
# PUAN ZUE , i hope you also can help me to improve my speech in front of public .
dear puan zue,
speaking in public is just not my thing. when im in that situation , my hands and legs would shiver excitedly. im afraid that people would laugh at me whenever i do mistakes.basicly, everybody has that kind of feeling on their first shot.but they manage to overcome that feeling and perform their presentations without any disturbance.the barrier of nervousness eventually gone with the help of high self confidence.to obtain that self confidence is a problem for me. i hope we could discuss this kind of awkwardness in our next meeting.goodbye
dear puan zue
nervousness is one type of feeling that all people have experieanced it at least once in their life.I also have the experienced about this.the last time I were nervous in public is when I have been selected to be a leader of my team.its so defficult to me,becaouse I can't to speak in public.but I can do anythings because the decision was final.so,i have to take the responsible as a leader for our group.acctually,speak in public is the most things that make me don't want to be a leader!I am so affraid.but I know,mybe this is the good oppurtiny to improve my public speaking.what I do is early preparation before the speech.i practise infornt of the mirrow to make my confident level increase.Besides,i trying to remember all the things that I want to speak.I always tell to myself that I can do the best for my speech.and its so effective to me.The secret ingredient that gave me the strength to conquer my nervousness is I have to confident with myself.because I knwow,no body can help me eccept my self.
thats all from me =]
seriously puan zue , i have a bad nervousness problem last time. I was afraid and just mumbled on the stage during the speech. But after a while i said to myself, "you know what, lets just do this confidently and just call it a day and make my self proud", so thats what i did. I didnt care what i would happen next after my speech, i just continued as so im just talking to a mirror. that really took the nervousness out of me.
ALOHA~^.< it is a way of greeting of Hawaiians.I'm just trying to avoid using "hai" or "hello"..haha~
SO,since the topic Pn.Zue mentioned at here is the "The Nervous Speaker",I guess it doesn't really just restricted to public speaking only?Instead of talking about public speaking,I rather share my experiences in my daily life which inquires me to speak and communicate every single thing in English.
Well,now I am a student of UNITEN and currently staying in the hostel provided..I am now staying in a twin bedroom with my friend..AND,now the thing is,YES,everyday when I open my eyes and the first word slipped out from my mouth is English ,"Good morning".
PS:My roommate is a Sabah-rian,can't speak Chinese very well.That's why I need to communicate with her in English every single minutes.YES,IS "EVERY SINGLE MINUTE". =D
Actually,it's not like I hate to speak in english or what,is just I always got no confidence to START a conversation in english.I can communicate well in english but i can't START it well.That's my core problem which now I am trying hard to overcome it.=] And yet,to become a spontaneous speaker,I always have this very thought in my head that "it doesn't really need a 100% appropriate grammar construction,but the speaker must be one who really knows how to catch the feelings of the audiences by his tones,body languages or etc"..I am considered that kind of speaker actually.When I am needed to speak spontaneously,mostly my presentation won't be having a total correct grammar in it..^^" Sorry,Pn.Zue,I think it was a wrong interpretion of a natural speaker.Therefore,I am working hard for it to shape myself into a "Perfect grammar and Natural speaker"..for sure,Pn.Zue is one of my role models for it.=)
For me,presentation is really not a THAT difficult thing for me.I may be very nervous in the heart,but at the same time,u can see me actually giving the presentation by adding a lot of humour sense and casuality in it.Well,it's just a way to put loose my nervousity..XD
ANYHOW,I will try harder to become one with perfect grammar and natural during presentation.
CIAO~=P
Nervous, in other word is an option which u can choose to be or not to be.If we think about it, it is just our brain plying trick with us.Your thought and imagination is the one which should be blame and your are the one should be controlling it!
Like in some cases, there are people who conquer their by their imagination. Such as, think that there is just melon in front of the stage.
Maybe you could be nervous when it is the first time you stand on a stage. But start from the second time, you should not be nervous or fear anymore. From then on, you should be only think of want to speak or not. As for nervous, it should already be in your hand to choose to be or not.
FROM YIN JOON (LIM)
ahmad faris,
hello doc
My experiences in public speaking was the most memorable thing that scarred my memory ever since. When I spoke to a group of higher ups, I experience a nervous break-down which I talk rudely to them in my own dialect which got me into trouble. I tried to told myself that they are not that different than me and just be myself. So, I talk to them just like how I talk with my friends. Even though, I couldn't control my nervousness that day, now I can. I did not get rid of my nervousness for good but I controlled it by taking a deep breath and blow off the anxiety away. When I am talking I tried to be as polite as possible and never repeat the same mistake that I did again. Then I have to keep the flow going by brainstorming what to say next to prevent nervous when running out of idea. Lastly, I have to end the talk by showing the listener my highest gratitude and gave myself a pat at the back. The lesson that is to learn here is you need to learn how to deal with your nervous by finding out the sources of your nervousness and figures a away to solves it.
end of the story . (selamat hari raya, Doc. zue)
Assalamualaikum and hi Dr. Zue.
Yes, I would love to share how I encounter and face problems regarding 'nervousness'.The last time I present and talk in front of a large group of audience was when I was in Form 5. My English teacher asked me to give a speech during the opening ceremony of "English Week".What I did was I take a very deep breath and relax my mind. Besides that, I will always read back the text before presenting it so that I can make sure that I can avoid making mistakes. What I told myself was "I can do it!" and "I am ready!" The secret ingredient that gave me the strength to conquer my nervousness in public speaking is always have confidence when we are in front of public. As for me, if a person lack of confidence to talk or present in front of public, they will face a lot of difficulties in managing their nervousness in front of public. In a nutshell, everyone will face nervousness in front of public especially when its their first time. Lastly, nervousness can be overcome by having high level of confidence so that we can present perfectly in front of public.
Assalamualaikum Dr. Zue,
Nervousness is common among humans especially for first time public speakers. I remember the first time I spoke in public it was during the school assembly in front of thousands of people when I was form 2. I was nervous the moment my headmistress called my name. The moment I saw the audience I was speechless. That day I overcame my nervousness by looking at one person in the audience. At the end of the day my speech went well and was praised by the audience. Ever since that day I was more confident, therefore not that nervous anymore. The ways to overcome nervousness on stage is by practising in class. We can do that so our teachers and friends can judge our presentation. Besides that, we can talk in fount of a mirror so that we can gain more confidence. In a nut shell, it is fine to be nervous because it is a normal human characteristic. thank you
Hi Dr : zue.
Yes, I want to share. When i was on the stage in the last year in the secondary Elevated to the theater so that the word has been thrown very difficult that contained no I myself have begun to anxiety and nervousness. But I told myself all people can speak fluently Why not be like them. Become fryers with confidence. The secret ingredient is my self-confidence and a no-thinking when diction.
We can overcome our fears to speak with strength of character and understanding what do you talk >and got more information about it
Hello Doc..!!
A few days before I have to talk in front a lot of people, I get this queasy feeling in my stomach that won’t go away. I don’t want to eat. I just want to cancel so I don’t have to deal with the stress. My hands get sweaty before I get on stage. I feel like I want to run away. And then I walk out there, do what I have to do, and everything works out fine. I’m usually even pretty exhilarated by the time I get done. So here some tips to overcome nervousness. First , stay hydrated. I learned that dry mouth, also known as cotton mouth, is a very real sign of anxiety and the person experiencing it is suffering. The secret ? Stay hydrated. Drink plenty of water before you speak. Keep your water bottle with you at all times. I find the more nervous I am, the more water I need. Secondly, exercise to stay calm. Exercise also increases the body temperature, which can have a calming effect. It distracts you from your worries and helps you feel more confident. Thirdly , try visualization before you speak. Picture yourself walking up to the podium, smiling, calmly giving your speech, and then visualize the result you want afterward, such as people coming up to volunteer or congratulate you on your passionate speech. Perhaps bring a list of jokes and a few pictures that make you smile with you. Last but not least, always be prepared. Make sure you know what you’re going to say. Then, practice. Practice your first words more than any other part so that you can relax and focus on the audience instead of yourself.
When we are ask to give a speech in front of our classmates or varsities for a certain topic without any preparation or stuff , our hands and legs will automatically trembling and we will be clueless for a few minutes before we get the ideas. Am I right ? For the roughly meaning, this is what I called as nervousness. As a Malay people, I always speak in Malays and rarely speak in English but from time to time I realize that ‘English is very important nowadays. This soft skills need to be conquered so we can speak it out eloquently. Before this I don’t care what my primary teacher say about my English. A couple of years later, when I was in Malacca I think, one of the foreigner tourist ask me how he can go to A Famosa . I was blurred on that time because of my English fluency and I can’t help him much. As a Malaysian, I feel ashamed because I cant help him eventhough I know the place ! From that time, I told myself that I have to improve my English. I kept looking for a new word in the dictionary and trying to talk in English. I know my English is not good enough, but I’m sure the beauty of English will be mine. If I kept continuing this effort, this will be the secret ingredient that gave me the strength to conquer my nervousness in public speaking. Thanks.
Foo said...
Dear Madam Zue,
I am indeed a shy person since I was small , even when my relatives talked to me, my answer was never more than one sentence and I was shy to look into their eyes. Not to mention when I try to speak in public, my body was shivering, hand was sweating and brain was in blank. I can’t even speak well in the class when my teacher asked me to come to speak in front of my class. I was reluctant to get chosen to speak in front of many people and have a phobia towards it. I always try to overcome this problem by attending English tuition classes and after I graduated from secondary school and was waiting for SPM result , I attended English Plus Class which is organized by Smart Reader in Pasir Mas, Kelantan. The class is a three months course and the objective of the class is to improve the speaking skills of students who are going to further their studies in college or university. In the class, teacher always raised out a topic or issue which is about news that happened around us in Malaysia , for example, national service, school based assessment and vandalism.
I am still trying harder to improve my grammar and vocabulary so that I can speak well in public without any fear and full of confidence. I believe that by enhancing my English speaking skills , I can communicate well with people and easy to make friends all around the world.
I’m sure everyone will nervous when the first time they speak in front of large group and so am I. The last time I present in front of public was when I form 5 on Academic week event. Even I’ve had present in public for several times but the nervousness and lack of confidence never get over me. A day before it, I will read back the text all over again so I can avoid from making mistakes. Besides, I will practice until I have a little bit of confidence. Before the event started, I’ve told myself to relax and empty my mind to prevent nervousness. I always tell myself “I can do it” and “If not now, when?”. I must take every opportunity wisely. As for me, if we do our best in every chance given to us, we won’t be nervous and lack of confidence on the next time we talk in public. In a nut shell, the more we speak in front of audience, the more confidence we will be.
Assalamualaikum Madam Zue
Nervous? Yes I’m a nervous person, especially when I’m gonna give a talk in a public, my body will shaking so badly even in front of my classmate, to bad isn’t it? Even though I’m a nervous person, yet I’m like to talk so much as I think it can develop my confident.
I would like to share my tips on how to overcome the nervous feeling. First of all, you need is relax yourself and take a deep breath. Keep calm and start smiling, so that you’ll not strees and collapse. Next,take your time to know the public so that you wouldn’t feel too nervous. You’ll find variety of people that have different thougt about the public speaking. For you just keep calm and makes friend with them. Remember your audience wants you to succeed.
Lastly,Just don't stop practising, if u practice everyday the nervous will gone,as practise make perfects. As the saying goes, "no one is perfect".
Thank You Madam Zue
Your’s Sincerely,
Afif Shazwan
shafiq said ...
assalamualaikum and hi Dr.zue
I would like to share with others how i encounter with my `nervousness`. It`s pleasure for me to tell one of my biggest experience. Last time when i was form 5, my teacher asked me to give a speech in an opening ceremony in my school. What I did was, I will relax my mind and do something that can reduced my heart`s beat which is so fast. Furthermore , I will talk with my friend who was very experience in this situation. I will read the text again and again to make sure I will not forget once I was in front of the audience. I always told myself that “ I can do it” and “ If others can do why not me”. It gave me some a boost of confidence in myself. The secret ingredient that gave me the strength to conquer my nervousness in public speaking was I always let someone who was had leadership ability being my “ role model” especially ` Tun Dr. Mahathir`. Before I present , I will watch some videos of him to raise my spirit to speak and do not let others noticing my nervousness. In a nutshell, let someone to became your role model is also part of strategies to bring out during speech. As for me, having a role model doesn`t mean that I`m not good enough to give a speech ¸but it Is because I want to be a successful in giving a speech.
Dear Dr.Zue
I encountered my nervousness when I was in a public speaking by being brave and being confident in myself when I am talking in front of the public. One day, when I was in my English class my lecturer suddenly nominated me as speaker of a particular topic and it must be spoken in front of the class in 15 minute time. My whole body was shivering as the time came closer. As the time came I told myself to brave when I am speaking in front of the public and I did it just like as easy as an ABC. My lecturer praised me. The next situation was when I was in a public speaking competition every competitors that participated the competition, their text were so well prepared but it didn’t scare me I was confident with my text that I prepared by myself. So we should know that if anything passes our way and throws us down we should not give up easily on it and we should find a way to overcome the problem. These are the ways that I overcome my nervousness and fear in my public speaking situation.
Assalamualaikum Dr. Zue :D
Nervousness. The feelings that undermine us from doing our best. As an example, the last time when I was giving a speech for product review, I suddenly get nervous. I do not know what happens with me. I forgot the points that I've prepared, my mind gets confused and fuzzy. So what I do is 'just go with the flow'. I told myself that everything is alright, all going as planned. By positive thinking gave me the strength to conquer my nervousness in public speaking. Nervousness is just a mind play. Overcome it by increase your confidence level because only you can make a big change of who you are. Thank you.
Hemavathi said...
Hello...Dr.Zue
I would like to thank for giving this opportunity to express my experience in handling nervousness. My first experience was in my primary school.My school was a tamil school. At that time it was really terrible and horrible for me.Actually,my first experience was okay but i feel nervous if want to talk in public even though now.Honestly, i love to speak but i couldn't make it when i feel it's going to be hard. I felt my hand was sweating even there was an air-conditioner in that room. Before i start,i told to myself that i could do it.With the key of confidence,i think we could beat everything include nervousness. I'm sure for many students nervousness is the huge hurdle between them and their performance. Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.Beside of having confidence,i think one should practice a lot to talk before going to the public speaking.Students must avoid trying to memorize every words.Attempting to do so will simply increase stress, and cause greater nervousness if the sequence of the words you’re trying to memorize goes amiss. Moreover,don't expect 100 percent perfection from yourself.None of us are perfect. We all know that. Yet when it comes to public speaking, some of us tend to kick ourselves over every little perceived mistake we make.The truth is, even the best, most experienced speakers make many mistakes. When they do, they recover, keep going gracefully, and all is well. This is one of the key to public speaking success: to keep going gracefully.
In a nutshell,i think we could beat nervousness by many ways. Its all depends on you.INHALE CONFIDENCE AND EXHALE DOUBT.Thank you.
There wasn't really a last time where I felt nervous in public speaking. I always do have butterflies in my stomach when I am asked to do public speaking. Back in high school, I would make reasons to not attend school when I have to speak in front of my classmates or schoolmates. I will pretend sick, get up late or come up with absurd reasons that will somehow convince my mom to allow me to skip school on that particular day. But this couldn't go on further, I knew I had to face my nervousness somehow sooner so, i started by volunteering myself for public speaking in my school. It was certainly not easy to get out from your comfort zone and deliver a speech out there to the audience. For my first few tries, I did pretty badly and felt awful but its from there I picked up a few stuffs. So I have learned that, you certainly got to be really prepared before you give a speech. I always make sure that I thoroughly know the material that I am going to cover. Making a detailed outline, and breaking it into basic points to memorize, helps alot. One key to a polished presentation is to practice. Practice reduces mistakes and it will also diminish your nervousness. Most of the time, people cant see your extreme nervous beast inside you.When you're walking out onto the stage toward the podium, no one knows you're nervous. Your stomach could be in knots and you feel like you're going to be sick, but you really aren't showing nervous behavior. Sometimes, with public speaking, you think that people may notice you're nervous. This makes you even more nervous. There are only a few subtle cues that show a person is nervous and they're so small. So, always remember not to show your nervousness and also that people cant really see. Lastly, I always remember to not to overthink audience's reactions. When your speaking in public remain calm and before you give your introduction clench your fists and hold it for few seconds and then release. It will help you relax and you can kick a great start. Thats how I pretty much encounter my nervousness.
Nervousness is one of my problem since my school years.I still remembered the time that I had to speak English in front of new people.Because of my Malays language more fluent than my English, it is hard for me to smoothly speaking in English and yes, nervousness is the major problem. Because of that , I try to pull myself together by figure out the solutions and here it is.I will try to take a deep breath and relax just to stabilize back my breathing system and also my mind.When my mind in a bad condition , I cannot even proceed the speech and when I began to tremble,I cannot even pronounce clearly even such a simple word.I n addition,I will read back the speech’s text again and again so that I can avoid mistakes and bring back my confident.And for surely , I can speak in public without any mistakes with high confident.To sum up,if I always practice this step, I am sure that I can overcome my nervousness and wth high confident level,I can speak in public without any lapsus linguae because practice makes perfect.
Nervous speaker is very common nowadays. When doing oral presentation or being selected to participate in a public speaking, it is usually to see there is nervous speaker anywhere.
Well, everyone does not wish to become nervous when standing in front of the people, including me. But how comes I become nervous and shivering in front of the people?? You cannot said that I'm not preparing well, in the fact that I memorize all the things one day before the presentation.
I think the most important things when being a speaker is the confidence. You have to be confident when delivering your idea. If not how comes can you let the audience to agree to your opinion and how comes can you building your confidence and not being tension. You are shaking your legs on the stage with tremble voice, so how many people will continue to listen to your speech?
Ok. I experienced of being a nervous speaker so I can share some thoughts here.Even though I've took part in many competitions but the nervous again will crept into my mind when I needed to do presentation. However, you have to control yourself, changing the tension to motive power. Let nervous be your driving power. You will not being a nervous speaker anymore.
GOOD LUCK!!
Assalamualaikum Dr. Zue. Hope you will have a lovely day.
I always wanted to try the 'taste' of being a public speaker since high school.I would like to thank you for giving me the chance to present my group's impromptu speech in our first class of this semester. Honestly, I didn't know public speaking can be this fun but scary at the same time. I am sure no one wants to get humiliated in front of a big crowd, right? To me, I have my own personal ways to overcome the nervousness had within me. First of all, I need to know the reason to stand up in front of the large audience. Usually I want the audience to listen and pay attention to my speech loud and clear as I am giving an important message to them. I always tell this to myself that " If my audience do not understand or take consider of my message seriously at the end of the day, I fail to become as a public speaker". With this view, I can overcome my nervousness as well as able to speak up loud and clear to the people. So, it is important to know my main objective everytime when I become a public speaker. Other than that, I find inspiration before I present my speech. Just like how I am writing about "The Nervous Speaker" right now, inspiration is the biggest key to make my public speaking go smoothly. When I look at President Barrack Obama giving out his speech, I can see that he is very inspired with his words and I can feel that inspiration aura even from a television. This is why inspiration plays the biggest role in public speaking. Last but not least, I observe when other people become a public speaker. By observing them, I can use some of his/her skills and techniques and use it for my own in the future. It may not apply to everyone but I rather watch than read. Honestly, most of my public speaking skills are actually from a Japanese animation called "Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn" where half of the series emphasized on speech and debate about human philosophy, war and excess human population on Earth. Weird but it is the truth. In conclusion, it is also important to observe how other public speakers or leaders present their speech to the people around them.
Nervous was one of my great histories. I remember the first time i cried from nervousness when i took part in the traditional cloth runway in standard 2. My whole body shook when i took the first step. Although the experience was shameful, it built strength and bravery within me until now. :)
Assalamualaikum and Hi Dr. Zue
Yes, I would like to share the way I overcome my nervousness in public speaking. The last time I become nervous in public speaking is when I was asked to present my product review in front of my classmates. What I do?? I said to myself if others can do it then there is no excuse I can't and look straight forward at the wall. When it was my turn, I lose control of my own body and it shaken vigorously. At that same time, I said to myself if other can do it then there is no excuse I can't. That is how I overcome my nervousness in my public speaking. When I want to give a speech, my mind became total blackout. I refer back to my notes and look straight forward at the wall. I cannot see the audience because I get so nervous when I see the audience. So I continue to look forward and continue my speech. I was confident with my text and it makes me more to stand in front of the audience. Confidence is the ingredient to conquer my nervousness. Even now when I am confident, I can do public speaking at any time anywhere in front of audience. Thank you Dr. Zue, if you did not gave me the experience to do public speaking in front of the public, until now I being nervous. In conclusion nervousness is a normal thing for everybody but if we confident in everything we can accomplish and conquer anything. Thank you Dr. Zue
To be honest, I feel everyone was a nervous person. It's just whether they come out of it or whether they don't. In my case, I recently came out of it when I joined university. During my high school days, I would not want to go up in front of my fellow classmates to do my oral presentations. Maybe it was the fear that my friends would make fun of the way I speak or maybe the way I present myself. But then I realised, I was not the only one who felt this way. As time passed, I observed my other friends when they were up in class, and I found out that they weren't perfect either. So why should I be shy and afraid to share my thoughts and knowledge to my friends. Everyone is perfect, just in their own different ways. So what I learnt from my experience is that, no one should feel shy of themselves. Even if they don't speak so fluently, or if they are not good at expressing their thoughts with others, they should just be themselves and everything will fall in place. Well, that's what I feel. :)
sorry dr zue..actually i was under the weather that day when i could not attend class but after the raya break i knew that class is very important to a developing student ...its just tat i have sinus issues tat usually makes me really sleepy and sick early in the morning...i've been taking medication this past week and i promise to come to class on time as i did today..pleasee accept my review and i hope i am still entitled for the bonus marks. Back to what i came here to write about was which is how to combat shyness and nervousness when on stage and in the limelight.Basically, i'll consider myself as an outgoing and social guy but as u knw everyone has those situations when they experience a hint of shyness because it only shows that they are human and its human nature.These days i have come out of my shell and i usually do not feel shy when i give an oral presentation but i find it difficult usually explaining and elaborating some ideas because i take time to get ideas flowing so that is the thing i need to improve and after tat i believe i can strive to achieve the potential i know i have when doing an oral presentation.
ZAIREEN(IS 094578)
HELLO DR.ZUE,
Most people experience some level of speech anxiety when they have to speak in front of a group in fact of a bunch of the audiences.
Even im also had the same situation when facing that moment.Recently,i accidentally misplace my point and mumbling the matter that have nothing
to do with my topic in my presentation day.So i'll make sure that i always prepared well before my speech start and do some practices on delivering.
I noticed some how my practices realy help me to tackle my nervousness.Always do some study on a matters of your speech.Organization your main points
to avoid losing your place.Some people are gifted in ability to speak eloquently.They always choose the topics that they like and keep on boosting the
brilliant idea when they speak.It realy show the ability and talent in giving speech(like a proffesional speaker).Shy speaker may look stupid when they
giving speech.They look dumb and unclearly when delivering a speech.So,dont be to scared on your audiences.Keep on focusing on the main point of
your speech(on what you want to deliver) not to your audiences.
Hope it may help us and improve our public speaking's skill soon enough.....
Wow, so attractive this topic. Thanks dr cause having this.
Assalamualaikum and a very good day to everyone from me as afiq firdaus. I want to share my experiences and my actions to overtakw it. First of all, i'm generously so terrible nervous in speaking english in public or anywhere else. But, the nervous can't be your excuses but please overtaking it peeps. From my experiences that i learnt from my secondry school teacher that taught me to listening an english songs. What will we get back from it? Nice one, we should try to look out some of words that we not understand and try to look for the meaning then try to read it with correctly. Then, we follow the flow to sing the song with the true meaning and true reading that can help us to overtaking nervous while speaking. One more thing, try to read and discover the Oxford Dictionary. I have done before and finish it. What we will get back? The knowledgement of meaning, reading, speaking, and brave. Cause if we know that some of meaning of words that will be help us to give more power ro speak up. Just try my ways.
That all of my experiences. Thanks pals. 😃💪
Good day Dr.Zue
The Nervous Speaker?
Hmmm….well I am one of the nervous speaker as well. Speaking is one of the most terrific fears I ever had. When it is presentation time, I become even more nervous and stress as all the audience eyes will be on me. I always feel that some audience have over expectation on me as I speak and some even eagerly waiting for what I will say. This make the situation even worse because I lose control and forget what I suppose to tell to the audience. This issue causes to develop a fear of talking, because I am worried about being judged or saying the wrong thing. I use to have the time to sort through and gauge all my ideas, and don’t feel good about speaking before audience because I feel that they will pre-judge my speaking. And definitely I am the one going to be responsible for what I speak before audience. Maybe I am not matured enough to take those critics. As I mention it earlier comment in the blog, after attending Business English classes I feel more confident to speak up .I am eagerly waiting for my turn to share my thoughts with my classmate. “I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.” There goes some tips to perform a good presentation .First, make an eye contact with the audience. Look at the audience facial expression as you are speaking. This determine whether the audience satisfied with your presentation. Next, transform nervous energy into enthusiasm. Make your presentation as interesting as possible to get the audience attention. In a nutshell, speak up and speak clearly.
-Grace Sybesstina-
There was a few occasions that I had to deal with all that thumping heartbeat, sweaty hands, trembling legs.
When i had to recite poem infront of students during school rehearsal
Reciting paragraphs in class.
And then during uni/pre-uni, had to debate our idea in class practice.
Began to gain experience by auditioning to become an emcee.
Become the emcee myself.
And once, emceed an event with almost thousand of audience (i still remember that i was shaking all over the place, assume like an earthquake happened just on my spot and the rostrum only)
All these, gave me tense like,
Would they get me?
Can i make them enjoy my output?
Do i bore them?
Am i look stupid?
Do i offend them?
And many insecurities.
But focusing to all these will never let us move to the front.
Beat all these, assume the audition are all our friends, (or like how spongebob had imagine their audience in silly way)
Smile, even though fake, the brain will influence the mood to release endorphine eventually and we will enjoy presenting, and listeners will recieve the good vibe protruding from our voice.
Be prepared with what we gonna say.
Practice many times in front of mirror, or someone.
Try to make melodious/flagging intonation of your own.
Its oke if people laugh at us, means we did good job because there is audience interaction n heard us(yeay!!!)
If we feel nervous laugter might escape, try to hurt our tumb by pressing it against our nails (ouch!)
N dont let our audience know we are nervous inside. They might see that, but dont tell em. They are happier not being told that we are nervous
Practice in the empty hall/class sometimes. And then began to ask small group of friends to listen us.
Gradually, we will overcome very big amount of nervousness level.
To be honest, i am an introvert, but i enjoy talk in the front because we are actually having one-to-one conversation, emcee-audience or speaker-audience. Not with multiple people at the same time interacting with us.and they are not likely to interrupt us all people at once.
There are still nervousness in me every time i am in front of many people, because of anxiety, and if i can beat this in total, u guys can see the other side of me-jovial, bubbly, funny, but that anxiety still need to be beaten up.
That is all dr.zue and friends... hee..
(Monyet tutup mata//monkey close eyes)
Afraid is the best friend of failure. Have a nice day everyone. Today, I just want to share my experiences of nervousness when speak using English in public. Ladies and gentleman, it isn’t easy for me to speak in English, especially when I think that I will make mistakes and I’m embarrassed to stand in front of everybody and speak up using English.
Sometimes, I will get anxious and insecure when I’m speaking out loud using English at public. I will have a negative thinking of myself when I use English to speak with others. For example, I will judge myself before people around me started to judge me. I’ll worry about how they think about my words and sentences. Plus, I also refuse to have a conversation with my friends using English because I’m scared that they will make fun of me if I use a wronged words and have wrong pronunciation. I’m pretty sure this is because I lack of confidence and my vocabulary is not strong enough. But, I realize that I have to find a way to overcome my problem.
Ladies and gentleman, when I’m nervous to speak using English in public, I’ll always tell myself that “ there is no one will pay attention to your speech, so just act normal like there is no people around you! ” With that way, I will become more relax to speak. Learning a language is a process, we can’t afford to learn it all in just a short time. So, just be patient and start from baby steps. Get to know a new words and improve your vocabulary everyday. I think that will be a helpful ways to learn English.
Last but not least, the best medicine to overcome a nervousness in yourself when you have to speak in public is have a self-confident in yourself! Keep repeat and practice will help you a lot in your speech !
Be confident because you are the best you! Thank you.
From : CHO SZE N
Assalammualaikum DR. Zue,
“Errrr…. Errr…”
That will happened when I was nervous. I lost my words and confidence.
Once, I used to be a very brave person. I always get involved in story telling competition without any anxious or nervous in front of many people, but it was back then. Time flies so fast, day by day, week by week, year by year, the confidence in me getting less.
Maybe it started when I was in secondary school. I studied in a boarding school. There were so many elite students so; there is no reason for me to get involved in any speaking competitions. That was what I said to myself. I never get chances to make myself speak. I always taught that I’m not very good as they were. The confidence, the braveness, and the powerful of me disappeared.
After that, I went to a Matriculation College. I’ve given a chance to speak in a hall about DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). In that time, I’ve started to have an anxious, nervous as I feel myself about to faint. I can’t focus. I lost my words, my hands and my feet’s getting cold and pale but my friends always supporting me. I tried my best and I did it. My teacher said that I need to practice a lot. I agreed with him and I make an action. I’ve improved myself but not so good as he wants.
Now, I have the courage to speak but I can’t remove the nervousness easily. I need times and supports. Truly, today I still get nervous but I can speak. I am so shy. At first on the stage, you can see me unstable, but at the end, you can see I’m so comfortable with me.
In conclusion, I lost my braveness and self –confidence because I started to think that myself were no good. I just need to set in my mind that I’m as good as everyone else. Everyone can do it. It is either you want it or not. You yourself need to decide and choose.
Salam Dr Zue ,
When talk about this problem yes I admit that I am the no.1 nervous speaker in this universe I guess . I’ve a few problems or reasons why I actually can’t present well in class or I rarely talk in English language in class but I’ll just share the major one and its actually because I don’t talk too much when I’m in “awkward” situation . “Awkward” situation here is example like in class , not everyone is my friend and even I know some of them , we’re still not close enough and to talk in English with them is just sounds wrong to me maybe because I don’t know what topic should we talked about and this actually not happen in English class only ,I also have a problem when talk in Bahasa Malaysia so Dr can see actually im having a communication problem in college environment .
Honestly I actually talk a lot when I hanged out with my buddies , close buddies of course and we mostly talked in English or when I attend to concert mostly fans in Malaysia they talk in English not Bahasa because we meet with other fans from other countries as well but we talk in informal way while in class we’ve to talk in formal language and Dr always remind us you want us to sound fantastic when we talk in front of the class . So when I attended to concert I’d actually learnt to speak English and Alhamdulillah I can speak English maybe not as good as Dr and other students hehe but I feel quite proud with myself when I’d met another fans from UK , Canada and other countries at concert and we can communicate/understand each other very well means there’s no barrier such a “closed door” like in the quote that I mentioned in class presentation and they got my points plus they said my english was ok and they can understand me . I’m not saying my English is very good . I know my grammar/ vocabulary/ and sometimes my pronounce are so bad but I just want to stated here that my problem is I can’t speak or communicate fluently/perfectly when I’m in college .
But im not really sure if theres a lot of students out there who agree with my problem here but as what I’d learnt from the last presentation about the “Problem why Malaysian has a problem with English” I know I have to find a solution for this . I’m not saying I hate English class or classmates or this college but maybe because I don’t feel exciting and I don’t really have a topic to talked about that might make us closer so I think that is the reason why I always feel nervous and I don’t talk too much. But I'm hoping I can do better in the future . Wish me luck Dr :)
-Aina-
Nervousness in public speaking is a form of performance anxiety in which a person becomes very concerned that he or she will look visibly nervous, maybe even has a panic attack while speaking. People try to stay in their safe zone by running away from public speaking, however people get tricked into making nervous in public speaking more disruptive and chronic in this way.
One of my public speaking experiences was three years back. It was a public speaking competition and also my first try on public speaking. Before I went on the stage, my palm was sweating and I felt extremely nervous. When my name was called, I took a deep breath and walked to the stage. I kept telling myself, “Chong, be confident. Now what you can do is only thrown away your nervous and also fear. Trust yourself. ” I was very focus on my public speaking and it went well. With the guidance of my first experience on public speaking, I started to look for some effective solutions to help me in conquer my nervousness in public speaking.
I would like to share with all of you my strategies in handle nervousness in public speaking. First, facing your nervous. You have to realize the source of your nervous. If you are nervous and fear of being judged or making mistakes, always remember that audience really want you to succeed. Nobody is standing there hoping you will be boring or bad. You must face down your fear at the same time. Almost certainly, whatever it is that you are frightened of will not happen. If there is a real worry, like example you forgotten an important prop, do something to replace it and then stop nervous. Remember, nervous is unnecessary as you can always rationalize yourself out of fear.
Relaxing can help you a lot in removing your nervous before public speaking. It is the art of letting go your anxious. You can try to imagine you are made of rubber and letting go the body. It makes you more at ease and relaxed. Another better and easier way to relax yourself is breathe deeply. Practicing a breathing exercise before you go on will relax your body and mind. Slow your breathing until you can count to 6 seconds of in-breath and 6 seconds of out-breath. You will now go on in a totally relaxed and confident mood.
All in all, facing your nervous and combat it, not forgetting relax before public speaking are the few solutions to overcome your nervousness. Not letting your nervousness control you and learn to control it. Fear your nerves no longer!
Are you human? Ask yourself. Do you ever feel nervous? If that's the case, congratulations! You're now officially one. Don't worry, we're going to encounter this feeling almost every time. Trust me, you WILL. Worst of all, you can't even ignore it. When going on your first date, or being in an interview for a scholarship, or giving a presentation to a group of audience and even the athletes' are nervous during the Olympics. It's normal just that I've never been an Olympics athlete but during my boxing tournament, having the crowd cheering for me while my opponent was standing right in front me, in a stance of readying to knock me out. Wow! That's really a one hell of an experience. It’s either fight or flight. That's what nervousness is all about.
In a student point of view, I'm myself found that nervousness is kind of a pain in the neck. And I'm the kind of guy who are always trying to be different and look good in front of people. While other people feel nervous only before a public speaking, I feel both, before and after. I keep thinking of what people think of me. So, that's nervousness is always one step ahead of me. When that happens, it holds up all my thought, my mind goes blank, I mumble my way to the end and BOOM! I'm messed everything up. Even if I got accepted. I still won't be feeling good. And all of a sudden, the things I wanted to say earlier, even some IMPORTANT things come right back at me and how I wish I can throw that all up to the interviewer/audience as I throw a perfect punch to my opponent. Knock Out!!
It's not a matter of winning or losing. Seriously? NO. That's not true! That's when I've realized, you go in, to WIN. Public speaking is a boxing game. It’s boxing between you, yourself and the audience. At this point, I believed that I've knocked my nervous self out. It’s the audience who are still breathing. Without knocking them out, the game is still on. I know that's not right! I go in, I'm going to win. I breath the air I need, I stare at their eyes looking at me, I summons all the energy to throw the perfect punch as I speak and if I miss, I will bounce straight up and repeat until my opponent no longer breath. And as the bell rings, the judge will take my hand and raise it to the sky while I'm feeling glad, spoken all the things in my mind. Ignoring all people's judgment and ALWAYS believe in this one thing. "You go in, to WIN!"
NERVOUS SPEAKER ! Hahahaha….
This topic really makes me to think about myself three years back. That was who I am three years back. UNDENIABLE.
During the school times , if there was any presentation I would be very nervous .My teacher itself will be questioning me as if I did something wrong. Until my schooldays finished, I was still the same with sweaty palms, coward looks and increasing heartbeats.
But after the schooldays, I was selected to participate in the National Service. It was the turning point of my life. I have changed a lot of bad habits since I went there. One of that, surely is going to be my communication skill in front of many people.
In National Service, I was selected as the leader for the girls group representing my camp. First thing, to be a leader is also a big challenge because I have to control all the girls in the camp and have to be a role model to them. I have improved myself a lot over there. I have hear to the advice that was given by my trainers. There was a trainer named PN.AISYAH who have helped me a lot since I entered the camp. At first, she have scolded me a lot. But I just take it easy because I know there is a good thing behind all her anger towards me. Through many activities she also started to help me out. In the camp, we also practiced our communication skills by giving our reflection after every activity is conducted. This is also a good activity to prevent my nervousness.
The second challenge that I faced in the camp really helped me to prevent my nervousness. One day before the camp finishes, they will be having a cultural night. Before one week the cultural night’s starts, many preparations was going on. As the leader for the girls, I was requested to give a speech representing the girls in the camp. During the rehearsal, after I gave my speech one of my trainer was astonished with my performance and requested me to be the host of the cultural night than just giving the speech representing the girls. She have eliminated the girl who was in charge of hosting and replaced me to be the host. At first, I was quite nervous, but after some rehearsal’s the nervousness have flew out from me. I do have a good confidence and have successfully hosted the function with one of my friend, HAZIQ. After the function ended, PN.AISYAH have hugged me and told me that, “ Shantini,awak dah banyak berubah.Tetapi perubahan semua itu adalah perubahan yang baik.Awak dah lebih berani untuk tampil ke depan untuk membuat sesuatu.Kekalkan diri awak sebegini.Jangan berubah walau apa pun yang berlaku”.These words really do inspire me a lot. I think I’m still the same and could give any speeches without any nervousness.
Last but not least, speaking in front of many people is just a piece of cake if we practice always.
“ Practise makes perfect”. My advice is don’t be nervous no matter what happens.
#ENGB213 BUSSINESS ENGLISH (SECTION 2
Today's society is easy to look down on a person's ability . I am a student who lacks understanding of a subject with ease. it takes a long time for me to understand a subject. but luckily, I have a friend who wants and cares about my understanding in the classroom and give support to me . if I am less familiar with the topic, my friend will help me . Therefore, even if we do not understand about a given topic , we need to realize there who want to help us if we ask them
I was already prone to anxiety and fear quickly if required to do presentations. But worries would disappear if I make an action that can make me comfortable in front . For example, grasping hands , nails and so on play . But it will increase anxiety if I looked straight into the eyes of the audience. That's why if I do my presentations,I often look at the floor or wall to reduce anxiety.
Assalamualaikum and good evening (depends on the time you read this) to Dr Zue .
Most of the people today are afraid of the words “Public Speaking” right? Yes it is. It is because there is nervousness in them same goes to me. Nervousness when doing public speaking is actually just a mindset of ours and it can be prevented by practices with the proper skills. We can see nowadays many undergraduate students cannot speak properly on the stage with many audiences focus on them although they had been exposed with the correct methods since their secondary school time. Why? I believe it is because they have not enough practices and avoid to speak in front of many people.
I just want to share my experience regarding my nervousness in public speaking.
I am not a good speaker at all when I was in secondary school (not to mention when in primary school) but at least now I can throw away the words ”at all”. Although it just a little bit different from before, but it is better than nothing right? I remembered when I was asked by my English teacher to prepare a speech. I was in Form 3 at that time. I shocked and I talked to myself “Oh my God! What should I do? I am dead man. ”. And when my turn came, my heart beating like it wanted to explode,my palm sweating while shivering. I could not speak properly. I could not recall what were my points which I had prepared for. I ended up with a very terrible speech but all the audiences clapped for me. Then I asked my best friend about my performance and he said “Not bad for the first-timer man. Keep it up ! “.
The encouragement from my best friend had gave me a new spirit to improve my speaking especially when speak in front of many people. After that I tried to volunteer myself when my teacher asked us(his/her students) to speak. From that day on, I had become a better speaker than before and I used my improvement in speaking when I had an interview to get the education scholarships and guess what, I got that ! Alhamdulillah. That’s all for now. Thank you for lending your time here.
Assalamualaikum Dr Zue,
Nervous, nervous, nervous. When we talk about nervousness, I can't lie myself from saying that I'm one of them who is nervous
when talking in front of the crowd. I'll feel a bit shaking when knowing that I'm about to speak, heart beats faster than normal but I'll try my best to overcome it by just go in front of the people and speak like nothing's going to happen, but still, I'm nervous.
As far as I remember, I never spoke in front of hundreds people, which means I never went for a public speaking
or a debate competition or anything similar to it. I never thought about having one too. I just speak in front of
the class during presentations.
During my primary school days, I went to English class every Sunday, because my father wanted to send me to.
I sometimes cried when I need to go to that English class, because it's 3 hours and I need to speak in front
of my classmates. I thought I better sit at home and watch cartoons. This continue till high school,
my father still sent me to that tuition, so I need to follow what he wants even though I hate it.
Then still, the same thing I need to do, speaks in front of the class on every Sunday with the same feelings,
nervous, shaking and I hate it. Till one day, I thought I need to find something positive about this tuition
so that I could be happy during the class session. Then I've found that it makes me control a bit of my nervousness.
Even though I'm still shaking during presentation, but at least I'll try my best.
If I didn't go for this tuition, I might be a wall or a wood. It's true that everything happens for reason.
Talking about overcoming those nervousness, I never think about it. I'll just go with the flow,
whatever happens, happens.
Let's just think that it's a good experience to deal with and think positive.
From : Nurin
Do u have speak up at public? I think we all had gone through such situation which is the nervousness first time when we speak up at pubic. Hi everyone!!! My name is Kavipriya. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to share my experience when I speak up at public.
When I was kid, I got participated in competition. I got sing in public and won prizes. At that time also I felt the nervousness. Then, when I studied in secondary school, I never participated in public speaking. At that time, I was too quiet and less speak with friends. So I totally do not had any experiences in public speaking.
Now when I were started my education in UNITEN, I used to be quiet at first. I just started to mingle with others in this semester. On the oral presentation of business English, I were too scared and my heartbeat is not act like normal. This is because I encounter a situation which was I received a call from my friend just before I wanted to start my talk. So I became nervous and do not know what to do. After thinking for a short time, I cancelled the call and when to stage to talk. So I were thinking about it and I undergo the nervousness. The next day, dr. zue got gave a short group assignment. My friends forced me to be the speakers. But I took it positively that this is the way to improve myself speak up in public. At that time, I felt the comfortable when I speak up. I realized I got maintain the eye contact with audience. I feel so good after that. For now, I am too interested to do public speaking.
Ladies and gentlemen, there also reasons why I scared when asked to do public speaking. I felt that audience are looking and judging me when I speak up. So when I do public speaking, I thinking about the view of audience about me. But now I have a knowledge that we should be brave and this is the time to improve ourselves because public speaking is a necessary thing in our life. When we go for work also, we have to speak up in public. So be ready from now.
Nothing is impossible. When I can do it, why not you????
Thanks to dr.zue to improve my engish. I learned so much things from dr.zue class.
From Kavipriya.
Yes i am a nervous speaker myself . But i think a little bit of nervousness is a good thing
The feelings makes us more prepared for the public speaking or presentation .
But beware , if you too nervous than it is not a good thing .
You will forget the things that you wanted to talk about and basically your body
will shake vigorously . Trust me , you do not want this to happen , as it will disturb
your presentation .
There are several ways that we can do to improve ourselves to talk better in public .
For me , the most important is to rehearsal as many time as we need . This will likely
make us more comfortable with the actual speech . Rehearsal also makes us feel ready
to present in front of many people .
The next action that we can take to overcome the problem is to try to pictures , visualization ,
or laughing just before we speak .Sometimes we do not realize we are nervous just before it is our
turn to speak . We may feel calm and prepared until just before our name is called . To avoid this
we can visualize relaxing image in our minds to relaxed ourselves . Plus we can also take a deep breath
to calm ourselves .
Well that is about it from what i think we can do to improve ourselves . But whatever we do to control
our nerves is up to someone personality . It all depends on the person themselves . And the most important
thing is to keep practicing . Practice makes perfect .
Hye dr.zue and everyone
Honestly, I am so nervous to start writing same goes when I have to speak in front of the class.
Okay in my opinion, nervous is a feeling that mostly came from the inclination of shyness, scared, lack of confidence and also lack of knowledge.so when we have to speak in front of the peoples, we are nervous. When we are nervous, normally what we want to say, we could not speak it out.
Nervousness reminds me when I was about 9 years old, I have to go on the stage and read the multiplication table and the other students must follow me. It was the first time for me standing on the stage alone and spoke using the microphone. On that time, I am so scared, nervous and also shy because I feel that I am too young to stand on that stage.so what I did was breathe deeply, take time to keep calm and memorized the multiplication table. After that I can read it fluently. Same when I was in standard six in primary school, I have to join the public speaking competition. I am so nervous because it is so hard for me to speak in front of many people actually. But I take it positively, relax and smile to the audience.
Actually I can speak up but when I am nervous, I cannot brain fast the thing that I want to talk about. And the big problem is I am not shy at all, I just cannot speak fluently when I am nervous.
So I have planned the strategies for myself. Although until today I am still nervous, but at least I have a few ways to reduce the nervousness. No.1 is always practice speak in front of the mirror and try imagine that you are talking to other people because practice make perfect. Second, smile to the audience, think positive and comfort myself standing in front of the class before start to speak. Next, try to read the English articles or watch English movies as many as I can so I can improve myself in vocab or grammar. Hope that it may help you too, friends. The most important thing is no matter how you feel, just get up, try and never give up. Try our best because we can do it!
With that, I thank you.
Speaking about nervousness when speak in public? Count me in. It's been part of my life right now. I always doubt at my speaking ability. That’s why I always nervous when speak in public but it’s over, now it becomes my time to shine. Remember back then, when I was in secondary school, the moment teacher asked us to speak in public, it was like a gun pointing at us, preparing to shoot at any time. It’s normal to wet your pants at the first time. Laughable, right? Nah, not everyone as coward as chicken. People always have their first time in life, it depends on how brave you are to face the situations that you are currently facing right now. In other words, someone is born to be a talented public speaker.
I always remind myself that I shouldn’t be nervous when speaking in public but I just couldn’t help myself. Before the public speaking started, I always felt stomachache. When I speak in public, I tend to forget my key points. Sometimes, I even have no idea what I am doing at that time. When I started public speaking, I always avoid eye to eye contact with audience. I was so afraid that when I speak, I see someone laughs at me or someone criticize me about my public speaking. Therefore, to prevent this from happening, I google myself about the strategy to be more confident in speaking. Then, I realize, that people tend to look people nose when in public speaking. At first, I was stunned at there for 3 second when looking at the strategy, but then, when I use it at public speaking, it works. It appears that you are looking at audience’s eyes but actually it’s not so I always use that skill when public speaking.
There’s always have strategies on how to handle your nervousness in public speaking. Remember to always know what you are going to speak. That’s one hell strategy that is so highly recommended. As the saying goes, know your enemy and know yourself confidently. Always have some backup plan or do some research about what you are going to talk about. If you have problems about forgetting your points, train it more or just memorize it but that will reduce your effectiveness because you will look a bit rigid trying to recall what you are memorizing. So, in order to prevent this from happening, start from now on, practice and practice again because practice makes perfect.
“This will be over. Yes it will be.” That what I always tell myself when I started my public speaking. Always be optimistic. When people laugh at me, I always imagine that maybe my points are hilarious. Besides, when people criticize you about your public speaking, always tell yourself that you are not perfect, everyone is not perfect, but you can improve. Learning from the lesson, become stronger for the next public speaking. Practise never lies. When you practice, you will see the results in future. So, don’t stop training and make yourself better.
The world is not all sunshine and rainbows. The world is not born just for you. No matter how hard your life is, never try to stop practicing. Nervousness is not something that easily healed but if you never quit in practice, I am sure that you will heal it. Winner never quits, quitter never win.
Hi Dr.Zue
Highly strung, easily frightened, easily agitated, anxious, edgy, tense, excitable, shy, fearful, frightened all is part of the nervousness. Speakers get nervous because of their lack lack of confident. Every debut speakers start with nervousness and their practice makes them perfect.Some they need to read a lot to improve their speaking skills. It's need to be concern because it may help for our future career.Moreover, nervous speakers can improve themselves with the guidance of a good advisor.
I'm not good speaker but I'm learning from the good one.For me nervouness is just a brick wall which stopping me from proceed to other level. Hope learning from DR.ZUE can improve myself.Thank you
-Anishwaran S/O raman-
SW095619
Talking in front of people had always been nerve wrecking for me.Speaking in a foreign language just took it to another level. Sometimes,I had a lot of brilliant ideas but i don't know how to express it.Its like i have a car but does not know how to drive.
My lack of confidence and low self-esteem really does not help matters either. I am not really comfortable with people eyes focusing on me. It felt like their eyes were judging me and they can see through my flaw easily.
When I was in high school, I try to take part in public speaking competition to improve my english but the day before the competition I was involved in an accident.After that incident,I never really put any effort to improve myself so maybe that is the core of my problems.
I know i can't stay like this forever so i will try to change and improve to the best of my abilities.
Insha'Allah with your guidance,I can improve and become a better speaker in the future
Yes i am a nervous speaker myself . But i think a little bit of nervousness is a good thing
The feelings makes us more prepared for the public speaking or presentation .
But beware , if you too nervous than it is not a good thing .
You will forget the things that you wanted to talk about and basically your body
will shake vigorously . Trust me , you do not want this to happen , as it will disturb
your presentation .
There are several ways that we can do to improve ourselves to talk better in public .
For me , the most important is to rehearsal as many time as we need . This will likely
make us more comfortable with the actual speech . Rehearsal also makes us feel ready
to present in front of many people .
The next action that we can take to overcome the problem is to try to pictures , visualization ,
or laughing just before we speak .Sometimes we do not realize we are nervous just before it is our
turn to speak . We may feel calm and prepared until just before our name is called . To avoid this
we can visualize relaxing image in our minds to relaxed ourselves . Plus we can also take a deep breath
to calm ourselves .
Well that is about it from what i think we can do to improve ourselves . But whatever we do to control
our nerves is up to someone personality . It all depends on the person themselves . And the most important
thing is to keep practicing . Practice makes perfect .
As a person who is not used to public speaking, I do feel nervous almost every time I speak in front of a wide audience. Speaking English one to one or in a small group is not that nervy as it is when speaking in front of the classroom for example. Personally, the feeling of nervousness comes to me whenever I knew I was about to speak in front of any audience. Knowing it was inevitable, I always try to prepare myself on what to speak when the time comes.
What I would most certainly do is to think of the points I’ll talk about, the explanation to it, any example I could give on the topics I talked about to convince the audience and so on. Even with lengthy preparation time, I would still feel nervous on stage. At that point I knew I had to do more than just prepare on my speech. To be honest, I had never searched the internet for websites on how to prepare for public speaking. I figured and did everything by myself, the way I see fit so to speak.
The next step I took when I speak in front is that I would bid my time a bit. I would talk a tad slowly, word by word, so that I would not forget on what to deliver to the audience. I think this method helped me a lot in easing the nerve I had on stage. I knew that eye contact plays an important role in public speaking. Thus I cannot run away from doing it. This is one particular area I really have trouble with. It just isn’t in my personality to look to people in the eyes for so long. The step I took to overcome it was to still look at the audience, but in such a way that I simply sweep my eyes over the audience from right to left, meeting only a few eyes along the way.
Even with all these steps, I have to admit I still feel nervous on stage. I told myself if I can’t shake this feeling off, then at least I should hide it and try not to reveal them as much. Such methods would be to clasp my hands together so they won’t go all shaky and make hand gestures once in a while so that they won’t seem too still. I would also move a bit, shifting my feet a little so that I wouldn’t make an impression as if I was rooted to the spot against my will.
Last but not least, I would always remind myself that what I’m about to talk about on stage does not really have a definitive right or wrong. If the speech was opinion-based, then I told myself I should not be afraid to speak my mind. On the other hand, if it’s a research-based speech, I would remind myself to try my best to convince the audience. As a conclusion, no matter how good or awful I was on stage, at the end of the day I would always remind myself that it is a continuous learning process, one that I should have more of to improve my skills when it comes to public speaking.
Zulfadhli Samsuri said...
Assalamualaikum dr zue...
Every time lecture ask me to speak English in front of many people, my nervous,fear,lack of confidence appear in myself.My leg start shiver and my head can't focus 100%. The thing that i do to encourage myself to believe that i can do it,i remember my whole family, i read some 'zikir' to make me feel a little bit relax.I talk to myself that no person does not make mistake in their live,why must scare to make mistake??just believe yourself and do what you think that is the best in the world!!
My secret ingredient is believe your self and always remember ALLAH always make your path perfect!
Hi everyone, OMG, this topic suits me so well. (haha) every-time I get informed about a presentation especially an individual presentation I will get a lifetime shock and scare. During the presentation as usual my palms get sweaty and my mind would have forgotten the opening lines even if I have practiced them for more than two weeks. My nervousness increases when the whole room gets quiet and all eyes are on me. This fear has been haunting me ever since my first presentation in school. But how did I overcome it? Its actually quite complicated to say... During my foundation on the first sem I was asked to present individually, and as usual I got so stressed thinking that I would definitely botched it. As I was preparing for my speech, I had a conversation with my elder brother about my upcoming presentation, he told me that "this thing is really easy cuz U are not going to talk to a girl rite? and U just gonna speak for minutes not hours....so just say whatever U can remember and use your general knowledge.. that's it you will be fine". Like he said I remembers myself whenever I'm having a presentation that I'm not going to talk to a girl and the speech is just gonna be a few minutes not hours...Lastly, the best way to get rid of nervousness during a presentation will be creating a strategy of ourselves before going for it.
Public speaking can make almost everybody tremble with nervous to just imagine about it. It required lot of courage and preparation to deal with the public speaking phobia. So do myself as I have no confidence in talking publicly especially in English. I always felt anxious and twitch just before I going to speak publicly such as presentation or speech.
I remember the most recently that I was so nervous standing in front of the class giving out my speech. It was a sudden class exercise given by the lecturer. We were working in group, but none of my group members want to go out and present. Therefore, I have taken initiative and nominated myself to present. My hands were trembling and felt very cold when I was witnessing my friends' speech.
When it was my turn, I can nearly hear my heartbeat palpitate rapidly. I tried to cool down myself but the eyes of those student was totally nailed me. I’m felt the times slowed down and silenced for the moments I’m began my speech. Even I’m holding a note but I was still feeling nervous and didn't know what to say. I’m totally overwhelmed by the nervousness. Then I had an idea came to my mind. If I looked at my closer friend maybe I can speak naturally and treat it as our normal daily conversation. Finally, I finished my speech by looking in to my friends' eyes.
One of the ways that I get over the nervousness was having the eye contacts with my closer friends. They always show supportive gesture to me and therefore will reduce my stress and boost my confidence. Also, I know them very well rather than other strangers. Therefore it feels like I'm having a conversation with them and it makes me feel more comfortable in that way. Somehow I can tell from their eyes that they are actually giving full support and try to be always with me while they are sitting down there and listen to me.
Second, if I have couple days to prepare my speech, I will practice and prepare it well at home. I will stand in front of the mirror and look right into my eyes and start practicing my speech. Understand well the title given and remember the points that I'm going to present. But don't remember the elaboration because when I memorize all the things that I going to say, it doesn't look naturally and look like a robot standing in front.
Third, this is the trickiest part, to overcome the nervousness I tend to look far behind the walls without compromising my speech quality. When I am speaking, I don’t straightly looks into the eye of the audience but instead of that I look far behind the walls or anything beyond the audience. This will tricked them that I am speaking publicly to them, in the same time I am avoiding direct eye-contact will rows of strangers. This will surely save my speech and reduce my nervousness.
Thank you.
Hi Dr.Zue,
I had experienced by involving in public speaking competition during secondary school. After practice about a month, I spoke in front of my English teacher during rehearsal. That time I’m was so nervous and go blank sometimes. Then my teacher gave me some tips to overcome the nervousness. I like to share the tips to the blogspot readers too because I felt more calm after I follow the tips and I won runner-up in that competition too.
Everyone, even experienced speakers, has some anxiety when speaking in front of a group of people. This is perfectly normal.
First of all, the very best way to deal with nervousness is too practice. Practice our speech so much that we can do it while on autopilot. That way, our lips and body will know what to do even if our mind has checked-out. We have to practice in front of mirror to avoid mistakes and errors in body language.
While speaking, concentrate on breathing slowly and deeply. Not only will we not hyper-ventilate this way but we will also keep a nice steady supply of oxygen flowing thru our blood stream. Nervous people have a tendency to take short shallows breaths.
More than that, make sure we know the material that we are going to cover. Make a detailed outline, and break it into basic points to memorize. Include subpoints and the title of speech.
Lastly, when we are on stage or speaking in public, calm our mind. Remember that even if we see people looking at us like they think we are weird, ignore it. What they think doesn't matter. If there really is something that we know we are doing wrong, fix it as quick as possible.
I hope this tips all will help the readers to overcome the nervousness during speaking. Thank you.
Being nervous is completely normal during public speaking especially for the beginners. I say this from personal experience. My hand used to shake when I’m on the stage or in front of the class when delivering oral presentations, my voice would break, my thoughts would scramble, delivering my points seem to be a challenge as I keep going. However, I somehow managed to reduce those tremors over time.
My dad used to say to me that, try to imagine your audience as sheep or donkeys when delivering my presentations. But I would say, instead of imagining those kinds of things, I think it’s better to come to term with the fact that we are going to deliver our speech to humans because we should try to present as good as possible to impress the audience instead of just talking to the crowd. We should present our speech with proper modulation and try to convey our emotions through our speech which would impress the audience. Emotions in our speech are really important because it gives life to our message or our ideas. In turn, we would incept a new idea to the audience. Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist once said, “You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.” That is why delivering a massage or an idea should be delivered in the best way possible.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE and PRACTICE!!! When they say practice makes perfect, it’s absolutely true. Having to prepare a speech at the last minute will only increase our anxiety. Preparing our speech early and thoroughly, also practice delivering our speech as many times as possible before the actual presentation. Practicing with mirror is also a good way to monitor your gestures to match your style. It’s also a good idea to practice with a partner and get feedback from them to improve delivery strategies. By doing so, it would also increase your confidence in the presentation.
Know your topic. You should research your topic thoroughly so that you are certain that you presenting accurate information and will be able to answer questions that the audience may ask. These things will greatly increase one’s confidence. Inaccuracy in information or false fact would greatly stricken your influence to the audience, and all your effort would be brought to naught.
I would also suggest that one should engage in positive activities before their presentations, such as listening to upbeat music, reading some magazines, scroll through the internet and other activity that you are comfortable with. These things would make one relaxed and would have an influence in their body language. When a person are totally relaxed, their body would show their confident through their body language. Involuntary movement would greatly reduce when they are relaxed.
Last but not least, I would really suggest that we students should make reading a habit because as much as other media are presented to us for learning, and some may consider reading is an ancient habit, but reading is really the best method to gain knowledge and it greatly helps us to increase our language proficiency while expanding our vocabulary. In turn, it would help us deliver our massages clearly. So, read more, increase our knowledge, practice often, and be confident with ourselves.
Hexagon Jeyaram (SN095632)
Hi dr.
Hmmm
Talking about nervousness ....omg most terrific word i have ever heard....
First of all, my first public speaking started very small where i have to read out a poem in assembly during school... I started to blabber with my leg shaking......
The last time i encountered these problem of nervousness during foundation...... Where i started to read the whole slide again without ever make an eye contact with the audience..
Since that i started to practicr about the topic given and i always make a small research to gain extra information so that im really prepared to face the audience
I always remind my self to that the audience will be our friend... So we wont feel the nervousness....
Thats all from me
NERVOUS SPEAKER ! Hahahaha….
This topic really makes me to think about myself three years back. That was who I am three years back. UNDENIABLE.
During the school times , if there was any presentation I would be very nervous .My teacher itself will be questioning me as if I did something wrong. Until my schooldays finished, I was still the same with sweaty palms, coward looks and increasing heartbeats.
But after the schooldays, I was selected to participate in the National Service. It was the turning point of my life. I have changed a lot of bad habits since I went there. One of that, surely is going to be my communication skill in front of many people.
In National Service, I was selected as the leader for the girls group representing my camp. First thing, to be a leader is also a big challenge because I have to control all the girls in the camp and have to be a role model to them. I have improved myself a lot over there. I have hear to the advice that was given by my trainers. There was a trainer named PN.AISYAH who have helped me a lot since I entered the camp. At first, she have scolded me a lot. But I just take it easy because I know there is a good thing behind all her anger towards me. Through many activities she also started to help me out. In the camp, we also practiced our communication skills by giving our reflection after every activity is conducted. This is also a good activity to prevent my nervousness.
The second challenge that I faced in the camp really helped me to prevent my nervousness. One day before the camp finishes, they will be having a cultural night. Before one week the cultural night’s starts, many preparations was going on. As the leader for the girls, I was requested to give a speech representing the girls in the camp. During the rehearsal, after I gave my speech one of my trainer was astonished with my performance and requested me to be the host of the cultural night than just giving the speech representing the girls. She have eliminated the girl who was in charge of hosting and replaced me to be the host. At first, I was quite nervous, but after some rehearsal’s the nervousness have flew out from me. I do have a good confidence and have successfully hosted the function with one of my friend, HAZIQ. After the function ended, PN.AISYAH have hugged me and told me that, “ Shantini,awak dah banyak berubah.Tetapi perubahan semua itu adalah perubahan yang baik.Awak dah lebih berani untuk tampil ke depan untuk membuat sesuatu.Kekalkan diri awak sebegini.Jangan berubah walau apa pun yang berlaku”.These words really do inspire me a lot. I think I’m still the same and could give any speeches without any nervousness.
Last but not least, speaking in front of many people is just a piece of cake if we practice always.
“ Practise makes perfect”. My advice is don’t be nervous no matter what happens.
#ENGB213 BUSSINESS ENGLISH (SECTION 2)
This is an age old question. Why do people get nervous when they have to speak in front of a group of strangers? The basic reason we get nervous is fear. It is the fear of the unknown and there is one possible cause of such fear is the audience-a group of total strangers. We don’t know how they will react to our speech or presentation. Make a point of meeting some of these total strangers before you get up on the podium if it is possible for you to do so. If not, then try to make eye contact with a few of them during your presentation and convince yourself that these are your friends. Pick someone who has a familiar face, a kind face, a face you can relate to. Someone who reminds you of a friend you know. If you’re able to take either one of these actions, the fear of speaking to a group of strangers world dissipate sooner than you think.
One final thought. Never never tell your audience at the beginning of the presentation that you are nervous and you are new at this. All that does is reinforce your lack of confidence and it also makes the audience nervous. They’re going to be sitting back thinking of two things. 1. you mean I have to sit through this horrible presentation because the speaker doesn’t know what he’s doing? Or 2. Lee’s sit back and see how bad this presentation is going to be and let’s look for mistakes. The truth of the matter is that you may feel nervous but the audience doesn’t really know that you are nervous. We are often a much harsher critic of our own ability than others.
Hello,
For me, whenever comes to presentations for public speaking, I use what I HAVE, plan the whole thing right, and set up my strategy. In my FYP presentation, I was prepared for everything. I studied every component I used in my prototype separately. I design my slides in points form, no paragraphs at all, so, no reading from the slides. I got my card, just if I forgot something. I listed down all the questions that maybe asked during or after the presentation. Before the actual presentation, I presented my prototype to my supervisor, and he helped me by asking more questions and made me see things from different angels. All that helped me a lot to FEEL COMFORTABLE and CONFIDENCE.
On the presentation day, I was relaxing myself, I don’t think much about the presentation, and I kept myself in a positive mode. I went into that room, my examiners were there, my supervisor and my friends too. Everything is ready and it’s time to kick off. At the beginning, I started to feel nervous a bit, but I got my friends there, so, I started presenting to them, and the moment I felt good, I looked to my examiners again. Then, I tried to change things up, I started moving around, and intentionally I left some points, so, later when the examiners start asking questions, FOR SURE it’s going to be from the questions I list them earlier. It’s just a matter of planning well, and setting up a good strategy.
Everyone has their own comfort zone, we don't like to go out of it, and when we exposed to a new thing we started panicking and be nervous about it, we can't wait to let it go. So, instead of just kicking it out, WHY NOT TO FIND A WAY TO LET PUBLIC SPEAKING IN YOUR COMFORT ZONE.
Thank you.
Yes , I am facing this problem and i am a nervous speaker.....
Every time before start my public speaking i tell to myself don‘t be shy and nervousness but it is no help to me when i speaking i will unconsciously to nervousness and shy . This nervousness cause my speak not clear and lost my idea or confuse what should i speak , the reasons are i don't confidence to myself and my English poor . So I don't have any secret ingredient to share to conquer the nervous in public speaking and i am searching the way to solve it . Lastly, I hope one day i can counter nervousness and shy then speak with confidence like the other good speaker .
Hello Dr Zue.
This is Syed Hasan from section 02.
So talking about Nervous Speaker ?
I am including in this one. The main reason is lack of confidence in myself. Sometimes I have something in my mind to say but because of my lack of confidence, I do not know whether it is true or not and the ending I just keep quiet. The other reason is because of shyness. When I do not have any idea to speak when I stand in front of peaople, automatically my confidence is at the lowest and my shyness is increasing and I start to blushing.
My life goals is not only to success in study but I would love if I can speak fluently in front of people because I have to. For me, if you can not speak, how can you survive in this world ? So for now what I did I just want to overcome my weakness. Hopefully. Efforts is important and spirit in myself must always be high.
So I really hope from this class, I can manage myself or maybe I can get something eventhough a little bit. Knowledge is important. I do not have to worry so much because I think I can do it and I want to make it better for next time. Really appreciate it what I get from this blog. Thank you Dr. Zue.
Public speaking? Yea. This is a word who every student afraid of it.
I am a choral speaking. When I am form 2, I joined choral speaking which held by daerah Kuala Muda Yan. And my school won second price in that competition. We all knew that choral speaking,is different with public speaking. Choral speaking is we speak as a team or a group but public speaking is individualy speak in front of others. So, public speaking is much more difficult than choral speaking as you dont have any companion in,public speaking. You just have to think and speak by yourself. So, public speaking is a new thing for,me. When I was in my secondary school, I less to speak Emglish eventhough when English class. I think is because of my schoool is SMJK school so we rarely speak English and all my friends use our mother tongue to speak. We dont have any opportunity to speak English because we all live in our comfort zone. I am so admired students who live in KL or Penang. They have the opportunities as well and they just have to appreciate it. After I came to university, I only knew that English is so important to me as I have to use English to communicate every day.
The last time I had my public speaking is ob last week class. That time I am so nervous but actuallt I am not a shy person, I just worried if I have nothing to say in front of others, THAT WILL BE SUPER AWKWARD! :(
I often speak English with my father but when I am speaking in front of my class, I still will feel NERVOUS! I seriously dont know why ! Maybe it is because SPEAKING among peoples and Speaking in front of others is two different things and I have to deal with the NERVOUSNESS!
I am still in the learning progress, So Good luck to me and my friends in SMJK. :D
#Tan Jhou Lynn (JOELYN)
Getting nervous is a part of us! It’s a part of everyone! No? Actually yes, literally it is a part of us. It’s a nature of human being to undergo the phase of “ I’m a nervous human being” before anyone could ever say that no, they aren’t a nervous one. It’s either they've already came through the phase where they are a nervous one early in their lifetime or for some, it’s after some time later in life. “It’s very unpleasant at first, but after a time it will not be so bothersome”. That is applicable to everyone and I couldn’t agree more myself. For instance, taking friendship as an example, one doesn’t straight away become friend with someone. There’s a “hi” at first, and a “how are you” maybe, and slowly we became close enough to be said as friends. Jumping from a nervous speaker to a spontaneous, cool and calm speaker is as same as becoming friends from an acquaintance stage, or at least it is for me. So, all that is matters at last is that, blending in with the environment. Once you can teach yourself not to bother about others point of view on you and focus on only how you wanted to talk, how you planned to talk, how you planned to entertain, amuse or even perplex and at the same time delivering the message you wanted to, you’re a good public speaker already. Mentality plays an important role, control it, and conquer your future with great speaking abilities.
OMG! My turn is next! This is where nervousness starts.
Being nervous doesn’t mean you aren’t prepared. Sometimes you can be extremely well prepared yet be nervous. I tend to believe being nervous is connected to the feeling of making a fun out of yourself or becoming the laughing stock among your friends. This can actually be a huge issue because sometimes how you speak matters more than what you speak. Speaking with confidence usually reflects a good speech.
To overcome this problem, my suggestion is first we need to be mentally well prepared. We need to believe in our speech before attempting to persuade others. Some sort of tips I may say such as if looking straight at the audiences’ eyes makes you feel nervous, look at their forehead instead. This provides some kind of illusion that you’re providing eye contact at the same time removes the nervous feeling in you. Start practice speaking in front of the mirror to build your charisma. Upon regular practice, speaking without even a slight nervousness is definitely doable. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.
To speak up in front of a group of strangers, initially, is no less a daunting task than attempting to save the world like how Dom did in Fast and Furious 7. However, it is unlikely that another murderous villain would appear before you in real life but it is likely that you would become a good presenter after countless practice.
To present an idea, first one must present themselves physically as an entity the people could relate to. Hence, dress as if you are a James Bond on a high profile mission. People would likely to be impressed and charmed to the point they would not believe that you are there to spy on them.
Next is to possess the eloquence and the elegance of your body movements to blind their senses. Both of the aspects mentioned require training and countless times of failure. One can always observe how do people persuade and push their ideas onto people and learn from it. Even in a small conversation of two, one can learn that there will always be micro expressions and major body language that betrays their thoughts.
Lastly of course, to fear failure is the way to not secure a victory. Public speaking is always there, ally you need is substance and training.HFE
Salam and hye Dr.Zue, i would like to share my opinions for this topic.
Well, as a normal teenager, having some speech anxiety is normal when i have to talk in front of audiences. So when i received task by anyone to give speech, i will make sure myself is well prepared which is to have good points and to know what i should and shouldn't say later. I cant deny, almost every time when i stood in front of audiences, i feel like i don't know what and how to deliver my speech. And that's when i know this nervous anxiety is controlling me. However, im pretty confident that if we keep on practice speaking in front of groups, sooner or later we will get used to it and we can overcome nervousness. Thank you Dr. Zue.
Nurul Amira Norazman
-Muhammad Eizzuddn-
SW096012
Assalamualaikum Pn Zue. To be honest. I am a nervous person myself when it comes to public speaking. I have encountered a lot of public speaking to be done since high school. based on my experience, the most important thing to avoid nervousness is to be completely ready with your speech , presentation or anything you are about to be done. Without proper preparation, you will find yourself in more uncomfortable condition. As what I were saying. Be prepared. A week or more for your preparation. you will actually feel a bit more comfortable and ready as you have been prepared earlier. that's what experience has teach me since. Always be prepared. You'll thanks yourself for it. Thanks.
It’s normal to get nervous about public speaking.
When you stand up in front of people and open your mouth, you’re making yourself vulnerable. Public speaking involves risk. I still get nervous when I have to present in unfamiliar situations. I’m very used to presenting to small groups of people on a course. That’s my comfort zone. But take me outside of that familiar situation, and I’ll get nervous. If I were to get upset about being nervous, I would make it worse. I don’t fight my nerves, I use them. Years ago, I went to meet counsellor in y school with a friend. As soon as he started talking, his tongue went dry and his lips turned white. It was so uncomfortable to watch him struggle through his few sentences to the counsellor. Later on I learned that dry mouth, also known as cotton mouth, is a very real sign of anxiety and the person experiencing it is suffering. Drink plenty of water before you speak. Keep your water bottle with you at all times. I find the more nervous I am, the more water I need. I remember my name being called, walking up the aisle between the desks to the front of the classroom, tripping on someone’s school bag and falling on my face in front of the entire class. I remembered the eruption of laughter, my heart pounding, my face burning. The teacher asked if I was OK and said go ahead and give your speech. I wanted to run out of the room. It was the longest 10 minutes of my life.
From Sarveshwaran.
TARK EMAD TARK
HAY Dr Zur
Nervous speaker?
I got the experience of nervousness when I starting do the presentations in my university life. From that time my feeling toward any type of pulping speaking became more and more scary .all that due to I had never perform any public speaking by English language before I came to Malaysia for Studying.
Me as any student who came from Middle east unfortunately our countries start late to focusing toward using the English language.
I remember when I did my VIVA for final year project one in front of four lecturers and my advisor all what I did is I was talking without looking to any of the lecturers and when I done with my (viva presentation) I have felt like a mountain was on my shoulder and someone Raise it
Well, for me, I always keep in mind that the audience wants me to succeed. They are not sitting there judging. People want me to do well because it makes for a better time for them too.
I always write my presentation, and rehearse it starting at the END. Practice my closing arguments. Then back up (a line, a paragraph, a page, some bullet points, whatever) and rehearse from there through to the end. Once I've got that down, back up a bit more and rehearse from that point through to the end.
Repeat this process until I'm at the beginning.
Why?
Because people usually rehearse by starting at the beginning and going to a point where they have trouble, then they start over and go again, stopping a bit later down the road when they have trouble. And so on. The point is, by doing that, the part that is over first (the beginning of your presentation) is the part that has been rehearsed the most, and the most important part (the end) is the part that got rehearsed the least. So I get MORE uncomfortable with my speech as you go through it.
By rehearsing this way, I can get MORE comfortable with my speech as I go through it, because I've rehearsed the end of it the most. I get better as it goes on.
And, in my rehearsals, practice where I will pause for a breath.
Start with a deep breath. Calmly, talk to the audience as I would a dear friend, and pace myself.
Salam DR Zue.
Nervous is a normal feeling that every people will face it when doing something that they are not familiar especially talking or giving a speech in front of people. All this nervous and shyness feeling is normal as a human. But how some people overcome all that feeling and be a good speaker?
Firstly, make your own preparation. From the starting point of your speech until the end of your speech. This preparation include, how you arrange all your point, what you are going to talk, and the most important thing is who your audience.
Next is you must truly understand what you are going to share with people. If you still don’t know exactly and precisely all of your content, please do a revision and research about the topic. This is so important because once you get the idea, you must understand exactly how the idea works. Most people have the idea but usually they don’t know how the idea work, how to express the idea and most important thing how you express the idea so that your audience understand what you are talking about.
The next thing is practice. Michele Schumacher, the Legendary of Formula One racing competition was not born to handle the steering wheel and know everything related to driving technic when his age is 1 day old. But how he manage to success? Of course, with practice. So from now on, you must take your own time and practice on every aspect on giving your speech. You can talk to your friend or if it is awkward you can just talk to your self and feel the words that you are going to used. By doing that, you will get the feel and you will not lose your idea easily when you give the speech later.
No people success without making a mistake. So take the challenge, make a mistake and learn from that mistake.
Muhammad Izzat Amirul bin Rahmat
Sw 095662
Chong Yew Jet said...
Good day Dr. Zue.
I used to be very nervous when I was asked to present, especially when i was asked to present with Bahasa or English which is not my mother-tongue. I used to tremble when i was talking in front of the crowd including presenting in front of my friends last time. I started to seek for effective ways to overcome my phobia during my high school cause I found out public speaking will be very common in universities and even in working environment. I started to join a group of friends who speaks English and learn to hold a conversation with English with them. Right before any presentations, I will avoid to look through the notes which generates nervousness. Instead, I do something relaxing like chit-chatting with friends, make jokes with others. These help me to clam myself down and make me feel comfortable with the environment where I will be speaking in front of that room. During the presentation, I will try to talk what I prepared . If I found myself missed out something not really important, forget about it and move forward. Re-calling in front of the crowd will only generates tons of nervousness and will affect performance on the following slides thus ruin the whole presentation! Once the presentation is end, yeah, it feels great as I gained new experiences through-out the presentation.
Everyone is not perfect, which means we still have rooms to improve. Let's do it together and have a better future!
Thanks Dr Zue
From: CHONG YEW JET SW096521
Assalamualaikum Dr.Zue and to my fellow friends
Hurm... Nervous speaker...
Actually this topis right straight to me because i am on of the nervous speaker also .. :P .. actaully .. I am very envy and jelous when i see someone that have courage to speak infront fluently and boldly .. Why is jelous of them ?? because I also want to be a good speaker also which is not nervous when speaking in front . Before this i got my chance to speak infront on class.. but , i was like .. "urm.. uhh... ":(
I know everyone have the same feeling like nervous when speaking infront. But , anyone have their own strategy or way to overcome it. If have a good strategy , when you talk something no one will boring to hear it . As I am.. I try to overcome it and get my own strategy to overcome my nervousness . Taking an english class is the best course to develop my courageness to speaking infront and I learn a lot of things to improve it and I still in learning :P .
In conclusion.. dont say that you can't speak infront just because you dont know how to.. but take a good strategy and some courageness and you good to go . :)
Amir Syakir
ENGB 213 Sec. 2
Speaking about nervous speakers reminds me of myself. I had myself included into that category for a long time where actually I just recently came out from that problem. Ladies and gentlemen, I have this nervousness and I was a nervous speaker once because I had this problem where I stammer a lot. This stammering problem actually mentally weaken me and get me this nervousity. I feel scared to talk in front of the crowd because this stammering problem once made me a thing to be laughed on in my primary school. Since then I had this fear grew in me little by little. At one point I totally had lost the bravery to speak in front as I give my opinions to my friends to voice in out in behalf of myself. I taught that all this people who teases me always will go missing with my primary school and I could turn into a new leaf in my secondary school but it didn’t go as I wished where all of them joined the same secondary school with me. I once couldn’t resist this as my secondary school also I started to have this problem. At one point, things went to over till tears start to roll down my check in school. After that day, I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I told my parents when they asked why I didn’t want to go to school. I won’t stammer unless I use English.My dad speaks very well and he told me he once had this same problem when he was a kid too. He helped me a lot. He taught me all the techniques to overcome this stammering such as practicing tongue twisters, reading small and short stories and he gives me a topic and ask me to speak about it to him. Then as time goes, I had this problem overcome, till then I just don’t concentrate on this people who used to tease me. I Kept practicing and found it that my problem gets improving. Finally my dad brought my nervousness gone away. I now could speak well almost without and small stammering problem. I should thank my dad so much because he had brought confidence and bravery into me chasing away all the nervousness. Today, I’m not a nervous speaker. I will only get nervous if I don’t know what I want to speak about and I was called to speak at the front. To overcome it, I also get myself so many general knowledge by doing a lot of readings. As people say knowledge is power. If you have knowledge, fear not that nothing can stop you.
hi Dr. Zue
Some student may have not experience nervousness problem, unlike me. I think I have some serious problem on nervousness especially when I had to done some presentation or maybe just a public speaking in front of others. I tend to feel more nervous when i have to speak in front of the class. Basically my method to overcome my nervous is to keep moving to avoid my words from not going out from my mind. Next, I will try not to stare at the same person or else I cannot speak anymore after that. It might seems funny but it really works for me. And maybe everybody else got their own tactics to overcome their nervousness.
I am a nervous speaker.everytime i speak,i often stuttered because there are many factors that
lead to my nervousness.I always forgot my ideas and points to say whenever i am in front of the
audience.People looking at you and expecting something from you but you could not deliver the words
which why you stucked in the middle of the speech.Also,i didnt know the suitable words to describe
the meaning of the sentence.I tend to forgot anything on the stage ,perhaps because of no quite
experience of speaking in front.Besides that,i dont know how to start the speech in the appropriate
ways.Sometimes there are no greetings and opening words that i used to practiced in whole english class.
I find myself that i will do better if i keep practicing my english.Therefore ,here's three things that
i have studied to encounter nervousness in speaking.First of all,if i cannot remember my points and ideas,i will try to remember before giving a speech,it helps.I also have to make a rehearsal just to comfort myself so i could be prepared in such ways.Even sometimes,i speak to my friends in English whenever we are chilling so that i can improve myself.Secondly, i must tell my self to
be composed and not panic in any situation.In audience's eyes,they are likely not recognize that you are nevervous inside.Dont show them your nervousness instead you should show them your confidence of sending your messages.Last but not least,keep practicing your english.There are many ways that you can learn such as commending on blogs,reading articles or even watching youtube videos regarding speeches.Who knows,maybe our future self is that we could be a very confidence speaker therefore, i need to start practice from now on and not to give up.
Hello Dr. Zue ,
Nervous Speaker?? Hmmm… actually I am one of the nervous speaker here. I always do get nervous whenever its my turn to speak up. I wondered about it a lot. Like why do I become so nervous all of the time and what can we do about it? Why cant I talk like the other students filled with confidence?
The main reason is every speech that we give is done for a reason. The more when I think about how important on delivering my message the more nervous we may become if we start to spend too much time thinking about what will happen if we are not able to convince our audience to support my speech.
The trick that I learned to be less nervous during speech is to find ways to focus on the here and now and not the future. It’s really what’s going to happen in the future that is going to make us nervous. This means that focus on what’s going on in our speech right now and that will push thoughts of the future off to the side and thus reduce our nervousness.
I learned that being nervous it’s just a normal part of life. As speakers we always seem to become nervous before we get ready to give a speech. What we want to do is to find ways to deal with this feeling so that we can share the benefits of public speaking with our friends.
We will never be able to not be nervous before a speech because we are human after all! :P
Nervous speaker ?
It’s normal to get nervous about public speaking. When we stand up in front of people and open our mouth, we are making ourself vulnerable. I'm very used to give ideas to my coursemates . That’s my comfort zone. But , always feeling nervous and afraid to walk infront and giving some speech or presentation .
In my opinion, we can’t get better if we don’t have something to improve on. If our first talk is bad, it doesn’t mean that we’re a “bad” speaker. It just mean that we have no experience and that we should spend time working on ways to get better. In the worst case scenario, we got our most awful speaking experience out of the way. Things only get easier afterwards.
Preparation and practice are the foundation for a successful speech. We can never just wing it. We have to practice. Only then , we will get used to talk confidently infront of many people. So , keep on practicing and try to get rid of the nervous feeling .
Experiencing speech anxiety is normal, well, at least for me. I actually get nervous during delivering speech, but thank god, I still managed to control myself. I still can talk in front of people. In fact, I actually managed to get first prize in delivering speech competition during my school years. I think skills that developed needs practices in order to maintain it. For instance, me myself are lack of practice. In results, I feel uncanny during delivering speech now. I can feel the fear, the gaze of the people weakens me, unlike during my practice year.
In a nutshell, my advice to people is whatever your skills are, you need to practice it in order to maintaining your skills.
Hello Dr.Zue and fellow friends.
When comes to public speaking i tend to be very nervous. The points are in my head but the words won't pop out from my mouth. And through reading from several articles a have found that there are 2 similar problems and how to deal with the issues.
Why do people get nervous when they have to speak in front of a group of strangers? There have been many
studies done on this subject. Numerous doctoral theses have been written on this topic. The basic reason we get nervous is fear. It is the fear of the unknown and there are two possible causes of such fear. The first one is the audience-a group of total strangers. We don’t know how they will react to our speech or presentation. The second fear is the topic itself.
To handle the first type of fear-fear of speaking to a group of total stranger’s-is relatively easy to do. Make a point of meeting some of these total strangers before you get up on the podium if it is possible for you to do so. If not, then try to make eye contact with a few of them during your presentation and convince yourself that these are your friends. Pick someone who has a familiar face, a kind face, a face you can relate to. Someone who reminds you of a friend you know. If you’re able to take either one of these actions, the fear of speaking to a group of strangers world dissipate sooner than you think.
The second type of fear relates to the topic on which you speak it. If you do not know the topic well enough, you are going to be very nervous and rightly so. It does not matter if you have memorized or rehearsed your presentation 100 times before the day of reckoning. You will still feel nervous deep down because if you don’t know your subject, you’re going to be asking yourself this question “Geez… what if somebody asks me something on this topic and I don’t have the answer?” Many speakers have fallen flat on their faces after they have given a well-rehearsed presentation or speech as soon as someone in the audience asked them a question that they cannot answer or understand.
My favorite example is this: you can memorize Einstein’s theory of relativity and give a flawless presentation to a group of theoretical physicists at the convention. But unless you know the topic really well, you are going to be nervous and mortified because you know that you will not be able to answer the first question from the audience. The fear will never go away. You can have the best speaking coaches in the world coaching you. That fear will NEVER go away.
So the best way to conquer this fear is to know your subject. Instead of spending your time memorizing your speech or presentation, spend the time to really understand the topic and to try to anticipate any questions that may come up from the audience during and after your presentation. Once you feel that you have mastered the topic of your presentation, the fear of this unknown will also dissipate.
One final thought. Never never tell your audience at the beginning of the presentation that you are nervous and you are new at this. All that does is reinforce your lack of confidence and it also makes the audience nervous. They’re going to be sitting back thinking of two things. One – you mean I have to sit through this horrible presentation because the speaker does not know what he’s doing? Or two – Let's sit back and see how bad this presentation is going to be and let’s look for mistakes. The truth of the matter is that you may feel nervous but the audience does not really know that you are nervous. We are often a much harsher critic of our own ability than others.
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