Reflection on Oral Presentation

After what I did for the peer teaching assignment, there was quite a bit of stress on me to create a mind-blowing presentation. Honestly, I doubted I improved much since then. Nonetheless, I am amazed by the amount of improvement in some of my fellow classmates.

In particular, I would like to compliment Zikai for his remarkable improvement since the peer teaching. I can still remember the very first time when our group (Zikai, TianTian and I) made the presentation on “Writing an Effective Resume”. There was a period of time when he used the word “actually” seven times in three sentences. This time round he has markedly improved on the variation of his tone and he did not use a single “actually” throughout the presentation. In fact, it was me who fell into the trap of using the word “alright” repeatedly. Kudos to Zikai!

From the perspective of a devil’s advocate, I would argue that our presentation is rather informal which might be inappropriate for the setting. I am ambivalent about this. On one hand, I am not sure if the faculty members from the Dean’s office would buy our idea of the “Embedded Lessons”, as it might seem way too controversial. On the other hand, I feel that being informal can be an effective way to convey a message, especially if your presentation or proposal requires a paradigm shift in the audience. (What’s your take on this?)

Secondly, we failed to convey the structure of the modules effectively, which led to the avalanche of questions - it started off with one question on Cultural Exchange and ALL the following questions were laser-focused on that issue - which almost buried us alive.

Personally, I feel that I might be speaking too quickly at times and that I tend to look at the slides quite often. On top of that, I move quite a bit during presentations and I foresee that it could be a problem as the audience might get distracted. My guess is that I should train myself to stand still during a presentation and to pace myself to not speak too quickly.

In the subsequent sections of this blogpost, I shall express my views with regards to some of the questions addressed in class:

1. To have a script or not?
I guess this differs from person to person but I shall share what has worked for me. After preparing the slides, I present to an imaginary audience at home. It will be bumpy in the first twenty tries, but I repeat until I feel that it’s “presentable”. Along the way, I write down specific sentences which I tend to forget. Next, I practice for another hour, periodically looking at what I wrote. After that, for the points which I tend to forget, I “cheat” by editing the words on the slides such that they will remind me of what to say. The entire process takes less than four hours and I do it the night before the presentation.

Take-home message:
“Write what you say, rather than say what you write.”

2. How to eliminate fear/nervousness/anxiety during presentations?
I am not sure if my group members noticed, but I tremble uncontrollably just before a presentation. Stage fright haunts me ever since I was in primary school and it has never left me. Every salsa performance (be it group or solo), every presentation and every time I make a comment in class my heart beats faster, my palms sweat slightly and my brain becomes flooded with questions about what will others think of me. In the past, I try to fight these feelings, but now I got used to it and I see it as a surge of adrenaline rather than fear. Somehow or rather, the actual presentation always seems to be better than the rehearsals (from Napalie’s post, she mentioned this as well). To quote Jing Ping, “it’s all in the mind”, so think on the bright side and one will feel more positive during the presentation and hence make a better presentation; it's a self-fulfiling prophecy.

Here are some interesting quotes which I found from The Attack of the Butterflies - Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun:

Mark Twain, who made most of his income from speaking, not writing, said, "There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars."

Elvis Presley said, "I've never gotten over what they call stage fright. I go through it every show."

Thomas Jefferson was so afraid of public speaking he had someone else read the State of the Union address (George Washington didn't like speaking either).

Bono, of U2, claims to get nervous the morning of every one of the thousands of shows he's performed.

Winston Churchill, JFK, Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Walters, Johnny Carson, Barbara Streisand, and Ian Holm have all reported fears of public communication.

Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, John Updike, Jack Welch, and James Earl Jones all had stutters and were nervous speakers at one time in their lives.