While the Flying Taco is still a pretty lame superhero, she has come a long way in terms of her public speaking skills. Before this course, she never used an outline to bring her thoughts together. Everything used to come out in random, unrelated chunks. Good ideas, but terrible delivery. Her biggest breakthrough, however, is her major boost in confidence. She no longer tries to hide behind “maybe’s,” “um’s,” or her hair. She owns her words and really throws herself into the deep end. So far, she hasn’t sunk. This superhero still needs to keep her hands still and let her words do the moving, but overall, she feels ready for even the most unexpected twists of public speaking. These new “superpowers” are also helping her navigate the scary world of Meeting New People And Not Sounding Like An Idiot.

I think that the most important things to keep in mind for speaking effectively are preparation and confidence. First, if you don’t know your material inside and out, you won’t be prepared for flubs in memory. You can’t rely on memorizing an outline word for word. Once a technical issue presents itself, you’ll end up having a Michael Bay moment. You must know more about your topic than what you’re presenting to the audience. Always always always. Second, you need to have confidence. If you’re prepared, then tell yourself: you got this. You know what you’re going to say and you probably know more about it than your audience. Even if you make a small mistake, keep going–your audience probably can’t tell. Really own what you’re saying. If you don’t believe in your words, neither will your audience. Let your words be your safety net, not your enemy.

I realized that public speaking is basically doing your homework and then teaching it to the class. You are learning the basics (and maybe a little more), writing it down and making sure you’ve learned something. Then you come into the presentation with the mindset that you need to make sure your audience leaves knowing something new.

The public presentation skills (and the proper outlining skills) that I have learned in this class will definitely help me in the other classes I take in the rest of my undergrad and graduate school years. I feel much more confident about speaking in front of other people and the outlines have actually inspired me for writing I do outside of class.

In preparation for my personal speech, I browsed through the video archives on TED.com as well as did a brief YouTube search for great speeches. I stumbled upon a video of Patsy Rodenburg discussing the idea of “The Second Circle”. She specializes in theatre and public speaking so it makes sense that she would be a good presenter. However, it wasn’t just good–I was absolutely captivated.

Patsy makes excellent use of pauses, hand gestures, and overall body language to illustrate what she is talking about. She does not lift her hand just to lift it. Nearly every movement she makes is deliberate and serves to physically convey or emphasize the word she is saying at that moment. Some pauses and gestures (like the one I screencapped above) adds an air of dramaticness (is that a word?) and really makes you consider the significance of her words.

As she speaks, she does stumble and pause mid-sentence sometimes, or stops and goes a completely different direction with what she’s saying, but it never occurs to the audience member that it’s a stumble. It sounds so natural. It’s not awkward or rough. There is fluidity even in her mistakes. She does not make constant eye contact, but every gaze at an audience member or even at the floor serves its purpose. Again, she doesn’t do anything just to do it. It’s all very deliberate, yet incredibly natural.

Her voice is very pleasant to listen to, and the combination of her physical delivery and her vocal delivery fully captures each audience member’s attention. It’s hard to not focus on what she’s saying. The picture I posted above is one example of how engaged she is with the audience. She is fully present in every word she tells her listeners and in return, the audience is 100% captivated. Even though I was only watching through my computer screen, I could still feel the attention and engagement between me and Patsy. It sits comfortably between the speaker and the audience.