Week 6: Public Speaking and Gaining Confidence

This week Huanyu (Joe) Qiao led a discussion entitled “Public Speaking and Gaining Confidence.”  We watched two example speeches delivered by Lance Miller and Hans Rosling respectively.

Here are the links for the two speeches:

1.      Miller’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQSAYobiSuk

2.      Rosling’s speech: http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/six-simple-techniques-for-presenting-data-hans-rosling-ted-2006/

After watching the first speech, we discussed the guidelines for how to prepare a good public talk based on the manual of the Toastmaster International Club:

·         Organize Your Speech — Introduce the basic concepts of organizing a speech around a speech outline.

·         Get to the Point — Clearly state your speech goal, and make sure that every element of your speech focuses on that goal.

·         How to Say It — Examine word choice, sentence structure, and rhetorical devices.

·         Your Body Speaks — Complement words with posture, stance, gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact.

·         Vocal Variety — Guides you to add life to your voice with variations in pitch, pace, power, and pauses.

·         Research Your Topic — Addresses the importance of backing up your arguments with evidence, and touches on the types of evidence to use.

·         Get Comfortable With Visual Aids — Examines the use of slides, transparencies, flip charts, whiteboards, or props.

We also discussed how to gain confidence in front of your audiences:

·         As a teacher, be confident in your expertise in your field!

·         Practice makes perfect.

·         Have a detailed plan before you enter the classroom.

·         Take a deep breath before you start to give the talk.

Rosling’s talk demonstrates how to effectively use visual aids in a speech or a class.

We discussed several techniques that Hans Rosling used in his speech (http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/six-simple-techniques-for-presenting-data-hans-rosling-ted-2006/):

• Explain the data axes
• Highlight subsets of data
• Dig deeper to unwrap data
• Place labels close to data points
• Answer the “Why?” questions
• Complement data with energetic delivery