Speaking in front of a crowd can be frightening yet rewarding. Thinking of my own public\u00a0speaking experience, the most influential and important one, among all the presentations and\u00a0reports I did in my years of school life, is the public speaking competition I joined when I was\u00a0secondary 4. Without such an experience, I would never have discovered the fun of public
\nspeaking.<\/p>\n
Not being an especially outgoing student, I had never thought of being chosen by my English\u00a0teacher to be the class representative of an inter-class public speaking competition. Although it\u00a0was just a school event, merely thinking of me standing on the stage of the school hall presenting\u00a0my speech in English in front of the whole school was enough to scare me to death at that time.<\/p>\n
What if my English was not fluent enough? What if I suddenly forgot my speech on the stage?\u00a0What if people did not like the content of my speech? What if people laughed at my accent? I\u00a0was overwhelmed by these worries when I was preparing for the big day. And I still remember\u00a0my palms were sweating, my legs were shaking and my heart was in my mouth when I walked
\nonto the stage. Taking a deep breath, I started my speech as a principal on the topic \u2018Reward or\u00a0punishment – which is the better motivator?\u2019<\/p>\n
To my surprise, the audience nodded their heads as I was speaking; they even laughed when I\u00a0made a pun. This was the moment when I realized the essence of speaking \u2013 to communicate\u00a0ideas. When we speak, we are actually delivering and expressing our thoughts while receiving\u00a0response from our listeners. No one is perfect, and we do not have to expect perfection from\u00a0ourselves – what is important in speaking is to convey one’s ideas and evoke understanding in
\nothers.<\/p>\n
Finding myself interacting with the audience, I was able to calm my nerves and finish my\u00a0speech. As the audience clapped their hands, the feeling of accomplishment and excitement came\u00a0along and lasted for a long time.<\/p>\n
Since then, I have had a lot of chances to speak in front of the audience. I found that nervousness\u00a0towards public speaking is completely normal – the best way to overcome this is to prepare well\u00a0and practice hard for it. Try to go over your speech several times to let yourself be completely\u00a0familiar with it. You can also practice your speech in front of the mirror while paying attention to\u00a0your gestures, facial expressions and body movements; record your speech and listen to it as if\u00a0you were your audience is also useful as you can improve on your voice projection and\u00a0intonation.<\/p>\n
Once you are willing to take the first step to speak up and improve yourself, you will definitely\u00a0enjoy the fun of speaking and learn a lot from the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaking in front of a crowd can be frightening yet rewarding. Thinking of my own public\u00a0speaking experience, the most influential and important one, among all the presentations and\u00a0reports I did in my years of school life, is the public speaking competition I joined when I was\u00a0secondary 4. Without such an experience, I would never have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":11490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[713],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11487"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12293,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11487\/revisions\/12293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i-learner.edu.hk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}