If you are doing a speech that will be graded e.g. at university, you will likely be anxious. The assessor will judge your speech on two factors: content and presentation. Doing well in the presentation aspect will boost your marks even if the content is ordinary. The key to scoring high in the presentation category is to maintain eye contact. The easiest way to do is to memorise your speech so that you don’t have to look at your speech hand cards.

Here are some general tips:

1. Prepare you speech. This is obviously necessary. My technique is to first copy and paste stuff from the internet to use as a base. Since it must be original you would then need to make some modifications. Go through your findings and remove all the irrelevant parts. After that you would look for any technical parts that you don’t understand and research more on those parts and then expand that on the speech. By expanding on the parts you don’t understand you transform the original “copy and paste” collection to something of your own work and level of understanding.
2. Memorise your speech. Firstly, research any part of your speech that you don’t understand. It is easier to remember something that you understand. Secondly use your anxiety to your advantage. If I asked you to remember a time when you felt anxious, I’m sure you could remember. This is because your brain stores to memory moments which have intense emotion. Feeling anxious while trying to memorise your speech will make it easier to recall later on. Who would have thought that anxiety could be useful?
3. Use the board, overheads, etc. to help you. The amount you’ll need to memorise will decrease if you have visual aids. If you need to write something on the board, it is best to do most of it before your speech. That way you won’t waste time during the speech writing on the board. Wasting time should be avoided if the assessor has given you time limits.
4. Maintain eye contact. This is the most important step. If you can maintain eye contact for your whole speech i.e. you never need to look at your speech cards, you will likely get good marks even if your content is ordinary. Have your notes in your hand but don’t look at them except in an emergency. If there are some statistics/facts that you find difficult to remember, write them on the board prior to the speech or on your presentation slides.

By SocialAnxietyForums.com Admin