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Specific Public Speaking FearsType of Fear Percent Reporting Trembling or shaking 80% Mind going blank 74% Doing or saying something embarrassing 64% Unable to continue talking 63% Not making sense 59% Sounding foolish 59% Figure 2.3 As a homework assignment, ask students to identify the specific fears they have about public speaking. Collate their responses, and compare them with the list in Figure 2.3. Public Speaking, Eighth Edition, by Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn and Randall Osborn. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter 2 Managing Your Fear of Speaking 35 they had planned to say something or what they intended to say next. Back in high school, you might have had to memorize a passage to recite in class the Gettysburg Address, a scene from Shakespeare, or a poem and you may have drawn a blank during your performance. It was probably traumatic standing in front of a class full of adolescents who just couldn t wait to tease you about it. Your college classroom audience will be more forgiving, but having your mind go blank is one of the major pitfalls of memorized presentations. It is one of the reasons that we do not recommend memorizing your speeches (see modes of presentation in Chapter 13). An effective speech is presented extemporaneously prepared and practiced but not written out and memorized. If you practice your speech using a key-word outline and keep the outline handy as you present your speech, drawing a blank should not be a major problem for you. If after all this, you do experience one of those rare moments when you simply can t remember what to say next, rephrase what you have just said. Audiences expect summaries in speeches, and going back over your material should help get you back on track. Even if you don t say exactly what you had planned to say exactly as you had planned to say it, the audience won t know it unless you tell them. Embarrassing Yourself. Whenever you speak before a group, you are putting yourself in the spotlight. The spotlight is bright and all eyes are on you. One of our students brought home the meaning of being in the spotlight to us. She was a cheerleader at Indiana University. One day she came into our office to ask for advice on controlling her communication anxiety. You re nervous about speaking to twenty students! we exclaimed. Why, every weekend you re out there in front of sixty thousand people in the stadium! That s different, she replied. Out there, Im not really in the spotlight. Those sixty thousand fans are focused on the game. In this class, the twenty students are focused on me. What can you possibly do during a speech that would be all that embarrassing? Tremble in front of people? we ve already discussed that. Forget how you planned to say something? no big deal. Mispronounce big words or technical terms? look them up ahead of time. Flub a word? everyone misuses or mispronounces a word from time to time. Save being embarrassed for the truly ludicrous things that might happen in your life, and keep in mind that you will survive even those. The first class one of your authors ever taught in college was a large lecture class held in a large auditorium. During the first exam, a student asked her to cut off the air conditioners that were making a racket. She shut off the air conditioner on one side of the stage and was walking across to the other side, not looking where she was going, and tripped over the base of the free-standing chalkboard, falling flat on her face in front of 250 students. Now, that s embarrassing, especially for a first-time teaching assistant. She was praying there d be a trap door she could fall through, but of course there wasn t. To her amazement, however, no one was laughing. The expressions on the faces she could see were ones of concern. She picked herself up, brushed the dirt off her clothes, and muttered something like, Grace is my middle name! The students looks changed from concern to relief when they realized she wasn t hurt. To her everlasting surprise, the sun rose as usual the next morning. And regardless of how embarrassed she had felt, she had to show up for the next class. ESL: Ask your ESL students to share what speakers in their culture might find especially embarrassing. Public Speaking, Eighth Edition, by Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn and Randall Osborn. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. 36 Part One The Foundations of Public Speaking Chances are, nothing like this will happen to you in your public speaking class, but if it does, you will survive it, and you may be even stronger because of it. Unable to Continue Talking. Although almost two-thirds of the people in the general population survey mentioned the inability to continue talking as a specific concern, it very rarely happens even to the most anxious of students. On very, very rare occasions, a student may experience a panic attack. You re going along presenting your speech, everything is going well, when you suddenly feel overwhelmed with fear for no apparent reason. Not only are you afraid, but you also realize that the fear is irrational, and you think perhaps you re losing it. You really want to drop your notes and bolt for the door. Don t do it! Decide to weather the storm. Mark Twain once said, Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. A panic attack is usually short. It may last only a few seconds (although it may feel as though it s going on forever). Keep talking. Look for the friendliest face in the audience and direct your words to that person. Accept your fear for what it is, a temporary aberration. It will probably never happen again, but if you are worried about it, schedule an appointment with your instructor to discuss it. Making No Sense and Sounding Foolish. Most speakers who don t make sense and who sound foolish do so because they have not adequately prepared for their presentations. The remainder of this book is devoted to helping you prepare and present speeches that do make sense and sound intelligent. You will learn how to analyze your listeners and how to adapt your messages to their needs and interests. You will learn how to gain responsible knowledge through research and how to use this material to support your ideas. You will learn how to structure and organize your messages clearly and how to use oral language effectively. All of this information will help ensure that you make sense and don t sound foolish. On the other hand, if you take your assignments lightly, don t adequately prepare, and don t practice for your presentations, you ve earned the right to be anxious and to suffer the consequences. Negative Consequences. Anticipating negative results was an important concern of the students who were surveyed but not with the general population group. For students, the negative consequences were typically related to the grade they might receive on the speaking assignment (yet students who insist that they are most concerned about their grade are typically just as anxious when making ungraded presentations). Although grades may seem like a rational cause for concern, worrying about them diverts your focus from what should be your main concern. If you prepare your speeches solely for the purpose of making a good grade, you are not going to be a very successful speaker. Your main purpose for speaking must be to communicate something to your audience to provide them with new, interesting, or useful information or to convince them to change their ways of thinking or behaving. Presentation Anxiety Presentation anxiety is the discomfort you may feel while actually giving a speech. How much anxiety you experience as you present your speech is related to how much anticipatory anxiety you build up ahead of time. If you can keep your prespeech anxiety under control, you will feel better as you give your speech. presentation anxiety The fear reactions that occur during the presentation of a speech. Public Speaking, Eighth Edition, by Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn and Randall Osborn. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter 2 Managing Your Fear of Speaking 37 You will probably be most nervous when you first start to speak.12 Then, as you get used to the situation, you should gain confidence. Research shows that as you get into the presentation of your speech, your nervousness diminishes. Prepare your introduction carefully, and practice it until it flows easily. Keep your focus on what you want to communicate to your audience. Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1089
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