Have to present at a conference with international speakers present in the audience.
I’m not an expert, just a student and this conference is on a niche which I am not very well-versed in.
I tend to shake and stutter while speaking publicly so please do give me advice. I do plan on having a print of the speaking points.
Just wondering if there are any other tips on doing my best in such a situation? I’d like to have a good experience my first time around.
Comments
This is a job for your advisor, not reddit.
Sometimes practicing in front of mirror/ F&F give you confidence. Try that, do a mock session
just practice a whole bunch. try not to read everything off cards.
The biggest error I see people making is having way too many slides for the timeslot and/or going super slow on the first few slides and then rushing to the end.
If you think about what you want people to understand from your talk- what is the “so what?” – and give time to fully explain why it matters with evidence, people will get something out of it.
Take advantage of Toastmasters. That’s what they do. Your campus may even have a chapter. If not, there will likely be one in your area.
I stumble a lot when I am speaking, it took me a while to realise no one cares at all if you stumble or correct yourself. People just don’t focus on it and I’ve learned to not be self-conscious about it now, so try and keep that in mind.
Something that has helped me since I was in my teens (have to note I don’t know anything about brain functions so pls don’t correct me as this trick still works for me).
Think about why this anxiety exists: your brain is trying to help you prepare your body and brain by rushing blood with hormones everywhere right? Like it thinks you’re preparing to fight or flight. So it sends you the helpful stuff to your entire body, thinking it’s helping.
So use the stuff it sends you. Your brain and body are helping you, not fighting you.
When I think about it like this in simple terms (during anxiety attacks I can’t think more complex anyway), I feel calmer.
Another one is the “don’t feed the monkey” CBT trick if you firmly believe you shouldn’t be feeling any anxiety (I disagree but this is about your own assumptions). I got it from a book called smt similar.
The idea is to conceptualize a tiny monkey (okay, ape, technically) in your brain controlling the fight or flight reaction. It’s the only function it has. When it THINKS you’re in danger, it will flip the switch to turn on the alarm. It’s smt that used to be super helpful and not very often wrong, but monkey gets confused in modern environments. So while it may flip the switch and sound the alarm for real threats like you’re about to step into traffic, it may also do this for things like ordering food in a drive through.
The idea is that monkey doesn’t understand you, so when you give any other reaction but calm, it thinks you want it to sound the alarm again next time.
So the way to stop monkey from sounding the alarm next time, is by not feeding him/it.
Aka, say/think “thank you, monkey, but I am safe” in a calm voice.
This helped me prevent panic attacks back when I had them. This is smt to train though, so if you still have a few weeks to go and you easily get triggered, this may help you. The book explains it better and it’s not a big book.
You should practice talking while standing up and record it with your phone/computer camera. You can review the recording for anything unusual you don’t know already (e.g. how you move, use your hands, etc.)
When you practice your ENTIRE talk, your mind will have worked out what it wants to say and specific words to use. Then you won’t be struggling to figure it out during the actual presentation. Do the full thing at minimum 3-4 times.
The other thing is get used to it with a longer timeline in mind. Speak publicly whereever and whenever you can. If you don’t have opportunities, join clubs or go to a Toastmasters on/off campus. This will develop you from within.
Toastmasters is specifically to help people get used to speaking. I’ve got to it a lot and I’ve seen many people there who aren’t used to speaking at all. So you’ll always be surrounded by people who know and understand the challenge.
If you join Toastmasters, they’ll also give you access to new website software that you can use to practice with (it’s neat AI stuff).
wtf is wrong with this sub, who down-voted this? if this question is not appropriate here than what good’s this sub?!
Sit near the rear. Then sort of slightly trot or run to the stage if you can. This will make you a little out of breath when you get there and cover breathless nervousness.
Next, do anounce you’re scared to death to be up there speaking so please expect you to stutter and have a few voice issues.
Everyone in the room will get it immediately and you can stammer all you want because you just said you would.
Once you’ve spoken for a minute or two, the adrenaline will burn off and you’ll calm down and be fine.
Mentioning it up front is key, because it gives you permission to be nervous.
If you do make an obvious screw up you can just turn it into a joke by giving some “silent” knowing “look” around the room saying “Oops,I knew that was going to happen”. Or “I hate when that happens.” smiling all around.
You’re all good.
Practice your talk multiple times.
For me, it’s all about preparation and repetition in advance. Get the flow and timing right beforehand, and the time you present for real is like the tenth time and you have a good story. I’ve used PowerPoint’s record function to record myself slide-by-slide, re-doing what I say if it doesn’t flow.
In general, I’d shift to thinking about your audience rather than yourself if you can – what could the listeners benefit from? How do you best provide that to them? That reduces the attention you spend on yourself. In the same vein, also keep in mind that people have seen nervous speakers a billion times, they’ve seen stutterers, nasty “more a comment than a questions” throwing someone off, I think I’ve seen someone faint. So paradoxically you can relax a bit about all that. And maybe get the idea of wanting a good first experience out of your head. People tend to need the experience to get better at presentations. But you can do that prep anyway to optimize.
Also, slides aren’t manuscripts – they shouldn’t be walls of text. But it’s a bit contextual how simple they should be, but *generally* you’re more likely to put too much rather than too little. The way I was taught was that you want people’s attention to be on you and what you’re saying, not split between you and having to read lots of text; the slides are just a visual aid. But as said, that might vary a bit.