4th November marks my BIG day together with team Cap5.0. Any form of presentation in front of people is always a BIG thing to me as I am not a great speaker and tend to become nervous and forget my lines. Realizing this, I know that I will need to work doubly hard to make my presentation to be at least passable. Therefore, preparation IS crucial. I still remember what Ms Lim said during last Thursday class, if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. No, I do not want to see myself and our group fail and one more thing for sure, we are not going to regret after the oral presentation just because we have not given our best in preparation. With this common goal in mind, we have practiced together as a group everyday since Monday. Along the way, we comment on each other's slides and oral presentation and we see improvements each day. I can still remember how I stumbled again and again over my presentation lines during our first rehearsal as I was still pretty unprepared but my team mates kept cheering me on. This makes me determined to practice hard on my own thus back in hall, I make it a point to ask my friends to be my audience and practice in front of them. Each and every single practice is a boost to my confidence and I must say that, practice makes perfect!
As for my oral presentation slides, I scrimp and save on words and invest heavily on diagrams and graphic to enhance my presentation so that the audience will not be bored by slides dotted with plenty words. Doing so makes my slides look colorful with very few words which might not be able to guide the audience if they miss out what I have said.
Turning back the clock to fifteen past twelve this noon to reflect on my oral presentation, I remember vividly how my hand is shaking when using the laser pointer. So my number one point on the list of weaknesses still, is to CONQUER FEAR. Second point to note, I think I was slightly fast in my speaking pace as I was too focused on delivering my presentation in the given time. Point number three, I still need to work more on facial expression and gesture, especially when today I was holding mouse on one hand and laser pointer on the other hand and thus, I appeared clumsy when gesturing. However, there are a few encouraging improvements compared to my previous presentation. I did vary my tone when emphasizing a few important points and have more eye contacts with the audience given the feedbacks from peer teaching. My resolution for presentation in the future: I want to amuse my audience with my presentation. Hopefully I can develop a great sense of humor so that next time when I were to give a presentation again, I can entice my audience with jokes and have their smiles plastered on their faces. =)
Thanks for the very accurate reflection, Sheau Shiuh. I see very good awareness here - which is excellent! This is exactly the attitude which will guide you to success - putting your best foot forward, and subsequently reviewing and analysing your performance critically so that you can work on your weaknesses and build on your strengths.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the effort and preparation put in paid off - the audience was well-aware that you knew your part well, and you were an indispensable part of the team, a team that worked well together.
Back to your sharing: Know that all of us experience the 'fear' of standing in front of an audience; for some of us, conducting presentations can be sheer torture. That's natural! Nobody wants to look and sound like an idiot in front of a room full of attentive listeners.
So how do we overcome that fear? Grabbing hold of opportunities to stand in front of an audience and sharing your thoughts and opinions is one way, practice is another. Yet another is visualising your success, thinking positive thoughts. For this Oral Presentation (OP), you can be sure that all of us want you to succeed. We really do.
I see a more confident you in this OP, so that is good. You were right when you shared that you were too focused on delivering your section. You want to persuade your audience, so the presentation ought to be audience-centred rather than content-centred. Don't focus on delivering the content; rather, focus on getting your audience to understand the content and its importance. The use of the quote from Confucius and the elaboration was an excellent example - that's exactly how you grab audience's attention and make an impression! I really like that!
I saw improved eye-contact, though it can be better - less obvious reference to the slides would help tremendously. I saw good effort to hide your anxiety; you didn't seem visibly nervous. Nevertheless, some non-verbal cues did reveal the stress you were under so you will want to work on those. Also, I'll like to see more passion and enthusiasm - sell the 'product' aggressively, as if that's the determining decision in a life and death situation. Really go all out to persuasively highlight the benefits to your suggested solution. Make use of your voice to do that (Check out the section 'Your Voice-The Primary Means of Conveying Your Message' in this article: Click here).
Just a point to share - don't wait to 'hopefuly' develop your sense of humour. Work on it! Read joke books, prepare one-liners, remember funny anecdotes/stories so you can use them in your presentations. It helps.
Thanks for the good effort again, Sheau Shiuh!
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ReplyDeleteThank you very much, Ms Lim, for the useful pointers you provided me in the comment.=) I will always remember what I have learned from ES2007S and apply them in my daily life, especially in presentation, job interview, resume writing etc.
ReplyDeleteI am very grateful for the comment you have written me and I promise that I will put in effort to improve on my presentation skills.Thank you once again , Ms Lim. =)
*P.S.: I couldn't open the link that you attached in the comment. Is there any other way to view it?
Hi Sushi,
ReplyDeleteWell done! Your effort has paid. Compared with your peer teaching, you are more confident. The quotation from the Confucius was excellently done, and the effect was awesome.
As for the points you mentioned, firstly, you were calm on that day and I did not sense your nerves. Secondly, speaking too fast is also one of my weaknesses. My solution to that is to reduce the amount of words by speaking concisely. The goal of our presentation is not to feed our audience as much as we could but to make our audience understand what we have delivered. Doing this will make me less worried about running out of time and hence I could speak slower. Also making gestures also helps me to slow my pace.
I agree with you that practice makes perfect. Let’s keep on improving our presentation skills.
Hi Sheau Shiuh,
ReplyDeleteWhen you click on the link , give it about 30 seconds to load. You will see a statement saying that the document is unable to load - it will eventually. Alternatively, you can click on the 'view the plain HTML' link.
Hi Wang Chen,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. Next time, I shall try to use the method that you suggested: focusing on the objective of our presentation rather than the presentation alone.
I am glad to know that I am more confident in my presentation now, thanks to the continuous rehearsals that my team and I had together.
Thank you very much! =)
Hi Ms Lim,
ReplyDeleteI tried both ways but it says,"Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later."
Is there any other way to access the file?
What about this link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HaELIRAWsR4J:www.nyee.edu/pdf/voice-presentation-skills.pdf+fear+of+presentation+site:.edu&hl=en&gl=sg
ReplyDelete