The Thoughts of Brian W. Miller

As I have addressed in my previous post, meeting with David from the UMW Speaking Center was a pleasant experience and helped to relieve a little of my outrageous amount of speech anxiety I have as I currently have beads of sweat dripping from my face just thinking about it.  As I think of it now, I feel confident in performing my speech tomorrow because I know that my fellow classmates are feeling in a similar way before their presentations and encouragement from them.  I would like to praise the three presentations from Wednesday’s meeting.  All of them were very fluid in their presentation, clear, and hints of passion in all three of them.

The tips that David gave to me in speech construction was to organize your speech in to diffferent subtopics and go into each of them with enough detail required instead of reading a paper or trying to remember everything.  He insisted that my speech would be great if I know the data by heart, and give an impromptu speech with using notecards as a guide because what is spoken does not have to be identical to whats on the paper or on your notes for that matter.  He also recommended a powerpoint technique known as “reveal and conceal.”  You would start off the powerpoint by using a blank slide and when you are ready to use the aid, flip to the next slide which would have your visual aid (picture, map, or little bit of text).  After you have mentioned the significant data relating to your visual aid, go to the next slide which would be blank and do this throughout your speech.  I am going to implement this method in my speech tomorrow, hopefully I will not choke during the speech.