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Important Public Speaking Tips for Students

Aastha Dogra
Tips for students to effective public speaking, to crack it with confidence and clarity.
When leaders, like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton deliver speeches, leave the audience amazed by their public speaking skills. What is it about these men, which makes people listen to them in rapt attention? Surely, it cannot be solely their authority, which makes people intimidated enough to listen to them.
Perhaps, it is their ability to connect with people, their ability to involve them, and make them feel important, through their communication and body language, which gets them the desired attention. Of course, their confidence, positive attitude, and dressing sense make a lot of difference too.
The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
When it comes to learning public speaking techniques, the earlier one starts, the better. That's why we have public speaking classes, an important part of the curriculum, right from schools to colleges.
In these classes, while delivering speeches, students often feel nervous and are not able to create the required impact. If you are one of those who is all sweats and panics in front of an audience and needs some advice to sail through smoothly, Here are some useful tips that could help you out.

Effective Tips for Mastering Public Speaking

Quality Content

► No matter how great a speaker you are, if the content of the speech is inadequate, it's going to backfire.
► Know exactly what message to convey, the kind of audience you are going to speak in front of and write the content accordingly.
► The speech should follow a logical sequence and should never ever seem haphazard. One story should lead to another and so on.
► As far as possible, avoid abrupt starting and endings of sub-topics in between the speech.

Spicy Content

► Once the basic assignment material is ready, you need to spice it up a bit with stories, anecdotes, any funny experiences, which help in bringing forth the points of the speech in an interesting way.
► If you lack in this, take help from your parents or friends or elder siblings.

Practice

► The most vital tip for students is to practice as many times possible.
► A good idea is to stand in front of a mirror and rehearse while watching yourself. This will help you to develop a good body language while delivering a speech.

Become Familiar

► Many a time, it's seen that students become jittery while public speaking. 
►To avoid this, go to the speech giving venue 1 hour earlier and become familiar with the surroundings.
► If possible, rehearse the whole speech along with the visual aids you are using so that you are at ease.

Handouts

► One of the main reasons that audience remains uninvolved in speeches is that it is busy jotting down the important points.
► In order to get full attention of the audience, tell them at the beginning of the speech that they will be getting handouts, which outline your entire speech, in the end.

Voice Modulation

► Voice modulation is very important. If you give the speech in the same tone, the audience will find it very monotonous and boring.
► If there are some important points in your speech, stress more on them.
► If you are about to share an interesting experience, take a pause and tell it, as if you are telling a story.
► On the whole, make sure that there is clarity in your voice and your speech is audible, by delivering it loudly and at the same time, slowly.

Hide Your Nervousness

► Perhaps, the most vital aspect of public speaking tips for all is to keep your nervousness and anxieties well hidden from the audience.
► The great speakers that you see around, that you feel are very confident, might be actually faking confidence, for all you know.
► Whether you are confident from within or are pretending to be confidence, the audience cannot tell the difference. So just fake it, plaster a smile on your face. and carry on.
Dos and Don'ts of Public Speaking
► To begin with, choose your speech topic very carefully. Ideally, select a topic which interests you and on which you have some previous knowledge.
► Be well-dressed. As everybody knows, first impressions count a lot.
► When delivering a speech, make sure that you maintain eye contact with the entire audience. Don't just look in one direction. Look at different people at different times during your speech. This is a great way to involve the audience in your speech.
► Do not read out your speech word by word. If possible, memorize it and do away with the written material completely.
► If quoting someone, or reading out a statistics, make sure to mention the source.
► When giving examples and stories, make sure that you include those which the audience can relate to. 
► It is seen that visual aids such as power-point presentations, interest and appeal to the audience a lot, so use them creatively to enhance the effectiveness of your speech
► Do not make the speech too lengthy. Keep it short, crisp, and interesting.
Here's hoping that these tips, will better equip you the next time you are on a stage to address an audience. In the end, it is practice, experience, patience and your ability to stay calm, which will improve your speaking skills, so inculcate all these and soon you will find the audience applauding and cheering for you! Best of Luck!