Speaking with Confidence

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Hello, welcome to another ABA English class. I’m teacher Robin and today we’re going to talk about speaking with confidence, specifically when you are giving a presentation. So some of you may use English in your job, and you may need to give a presentation from time to time. So I’m going to give you some tips to help with your nerves, and to help you make the presentation as interesting and interactive as possible.

Okay, so when we give a presentation, we want to start with style and I’ll give you some tips about how to do this. But starting with style helps you to make a good impression. So you want to catch your audience’s attention from the very beginning. And this will give you self-confidence, because if you can see that they are listening to you, then you will feel more confident when you are speaking. So start with style. How can we do this? How can we grab their attention? So these are some different attention-grabbing techniques, you can start by storytelling so you can tell a short story related to the presentation. You could start with humor, you could tell a joke, or yeah, a short joke. You can review the key message, so you can give them sort of a brief overview of what you’re going to talk about. For example, today we’re going to talk about speaking with confidence, I’m going to give you attention grabbing techniques, ways to beat your nerves and how to create good content. So this is the overall key message of a presentation. For example, you might want to show your audience an interesting picture related to what you’re talking about and maybe some friendly data or fun facts, nothing too boring. Not too many numbers, but you might want to share maybe a fun facts or some statistics, some numbers about what you’re going to talk about as well.

So one of the hardest parts about speaking to an audience speaking in public, is that we often feel nervous. It happens to me too. So how do you beat your nerves? To beat your nerves means to not feel nervous. So ways to overcome this. First, plan. Plan ahead, do not improvise your presentation, prepare and practice and rehearse. You can even ask, maybe a friend if you can rehearse your presentation for them. You could record yourself presenting and then watch it again. And then keep recording and see okay, there I need to improve this part, I need to maybe show more data, I need to add this image etc. So if you watch yourself, or ask a friend for feedback, this is how you improve your presentation. So do not wing it. Okay to wing it means to not practice. Practice, plan, prepare, this will set you up for success.

Okay, so as I said, make a good start. Believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, the presentation is not going to go well. So you need to believe in yourself and do not apologize. If you make a mistake or you get nervous, you don’t need to say “I’m sorry”, just keep going. Keep going. Your audience, they may not even notice, actually. Another thing that we need to do when we are presenting.. Now I’m looking at a camera, but if you are presenting live in front of an audience, make sure that you use appropriate eye contact. So don’t look at one person, specifically the whole time. Try to kind of look across the room, look to one side, then look to the metal, then look to the other side. Okay, so appropriate eye contact, don’t look down the whole time and don’t wander. So try to make clear eye contact with different sides of the room and find the right voice. Alright, so in your tone, so you want to kind of have a interesting tone, not a monotonous tone. Can you hear the way I am speaking right now? This is very boring and people will be bored to hear you speak like this. So you want to make sure that you use a lively, upbeat tone to grab people’s attention. Also be aware of your body language. So if you are standing behind a podium, don’t support yourself on the podium. Use hand gestures, but not too much. So maybe point out specific things. Don’t move your hands around too much. That can be distracting. So use stand up straight. This is a way to feel confident as well and to show that you feel confident. So stand up straight, use correct body language. And this will help you feel more comfortable when you are presenting. Okay, so these are some ways to beat your nerves.

Let’s look at how to create good content. Now, it doesn’t matter what the subject of your presentation is. You want to make it if you’re using a PowerPoint, it’s clear and attractive, so not too busy. Every slide should have maybe a visual, but not too much text. Don’t have paragraphs and paragraphs that you’re going to read to the audience because they can’t see it and it’s going to be boring. So a clear visual or clear chart or graph with just some bullet points of what you want to say. And then you can elaborate on this topic as you’re speaking. So include visuals, limit your written content, keep it short. Okay, so this depends, you might have to make a half hour presentation, it might be five minutes, it might be one hour, but try to keep within your time slot. You can even involve the audience by including a short activity. So maybe at the beginning, when you’re talking about some fun facts or data, you can ask your audience “Do you know the answer to this question?” “Who knows?”. And you can ask them and then involve them a little bit. Or you can do an activity. Maybe they find a partner, someone sitting next to them and they can speak briefly about what you’ve just what you’ve just told them, something like that. So keep your audience engaged and also involved in the presentation. That helps them to pay attention throughout.

All right. And finally, when you are finished, you want to end on a good note. So, for your perfect ending, you can also ask your audience if they have any questions. So once you finish you, thank them. “Thank you very much for your time.” “Thank you for listening.” “Do you have any questions?” And if they have a question, and you don’t know the answer, be honest, say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer to that. But give me your email, or your contact info. And I will look it up and I will get it to you.” So don’t act like you know the answer to something you do not. It’s perfectly fine to say “Actually, I’m not sure. I don’t know. Let me get you the exact information. And I will contact you tomorrow, later this week.” So this is a good way to engage your audience and to end on a good note with a question and answer session. Okay, thanking them again.

So I hope that these tips will help you to make a great presentation. And now I want to ask you some questions that you can answer in the comments. So my questions are, do you get nervous when you have to talk in public? I think we all do, but some more than others. What was the last presentation? If you have given a presentation, what was the last one that you gave? And what was it about? So tell us the topic. And do you have any tips for the other students who are watching? What has helped you, if you are experienced, giving presentations, and especially in English, in another language? What are your tips? So we’ve talked about practicing beating your nerves, creating good content. So is there anything that I missed that you want to include for other students who need help? So please tell me that in the comments. So I hope that this presentation has been useful for you. I wish you the best of luck on your next presentation and I will see you in the next class. Take care. Bye!