How to Master the Art of Public Speaking?

Have you ever noticed those confident speakers who steal everybody’s attention? The way they stand on the stage, speak, and interact is what keeps the audience tied to their words. And not to forget the level of confidence they own, a major contributor to their art of public speaking. Do you know why the word ‘Art’ is attached with the practice to public speaking? It is so because just like art public speaking is something that one learns through practice and does not acquire the skill overnight. Hence, using the word ‘art’ and not ‘science’ here is absolutely justified. Through this article let us find out how one can excel at the art of public speaking.

What is Public Speaking?

 Public speaking is an act to speak face to face to a live audience but without everything getting digitalized. Public speaking has moved from traditional methods to any form of speaking in front of live audiences using digital technologies. It is not just restricted to speeches, it is essential in the field of education, entertainment, and much more. It has emerged as one of the qualities employers look for in potential employees. 

Types of Public Speaking

Public speaking is a form of communication with the audience. Here are some of the types of public speaking:

1. Ceremonial Speaking: Communication is done on occasions and ceremonies such as marriages, graduations, and funerals
2. Demonstrative Speaking: Communication for explaining a demo of a product is known as demonstrative speaking
3. Informative Speaking: Communicating with the audience to inform or to pass on knowledge is informative speaking

Public Speaking Courses

You don’t want to relocate to another country but still want to learn from the top faculties? Here are the top public speaking courses online you can pursue from the comfort of your homes:

1. Dynamic Public Speaking Specialization by Coursera
2. Introduction to Public Speaking by Coursera
3. How to Improve Public Speaking Skills? By Google Digital Garage
4. Dynamic Public Speaking by University of Washington
5. Public Speaking by Rochester Institute of Technology
6. Fundamentals of Public Speaking at the University of North Dakota
7. LinkedIn Learning Communicating With Confidence
8. Public Speaking by VirtualSpeech

Tips for Public Speaking

Interact with Audience

Meeting the people beforehand who you will be speaking in front of, has many benefits. If they are familiar with you and your personality, your probability of capturing their attention increases to a great extent. Also, if you know about the stories of your audience, you can incorporate one of those in your speech. Which makes it highly interactive. Furthermore, if you’re nervous about your part at the event, an informal conversation with your audience could help.

Choose Concepts Over Content

Do not think of this as our school’s or college’s viva. Where we used to memorize things word-to-word, and just project them at the interviewer. You have to work in a different way while preparing for your speech. Make yourself well-acquainted with each concept that revolves around your content. Do this by constructing pointers of your data, stories, or whatever material you have. And then speak about it naturally, in your own way. This way, there are minimal chances of you getting stuck at any particular point. The flip side of the coin says that word-to-word memorization will make you sound unnatural or over-rehearsed.

Hold the Crowd Together

If you know how to take audience participation to the next level, you are a pro at this. Ask questions, throw a random punchline, and find ways to immerse them in your content. These are some ways you can provide them with devices to remember your material. If the audience is an active part of your speech, it’s most likely to grasp the most out of it.

Involve Stories

Stories are amongst the most powerful weapons that a speaker has. In fact, take your own example. How you would never want your granny to stop when she would narrate stories to you. Stories attain maximum attention, ease the audience, make messages memorable, and humanize your content. It’s important how you put your own stories into words. Once you accomplish in doing that, it will generate an impact that most facts and figures will fail too. An added benefit of incorporating your own stories into your speech is that you don’t forget what’s yours. Personal stories are relatively easy for you to remember.

Make your Call about Powerpoint Presentation

Many people tend to include fancy PowerPoint slides just to look more professional. As a matter of fact the audience, sometimes tend to lose interest because of either the slides being away from the speech or vice-versa. So why incorporate them into your speech? While you will be having everybody’s attention on you and not on the screen, it will be easy for you to convey whatever you have aimed at. But if you are making a presentation, keep it simple instead of visually appealing and compelling. It is important to keep in mind that glitches with technology can act as a hurdle in your path of acing.

Public Speaking Skills

While anyone can build speaking skills, there are some of the skills that work as added benefits. Here are some of the essential public speaking skills:

1. Confidence
2. Ability to eliminate nervousness
3. Time management
4. Interact with Audience
5. Clear Articulation
6. Presentation Skills

Having an upper hand at public speaking can work as an asset while applying to study abroad for your dream course. Get in touch with our experts at Leverage Edu and they will help you in getting admission in the course of your choice.