Introduction
Public speaking anxiety is a problem for many people. Some say that it is the number one fear of Americans over death. There have been many studies done in the general field of public speaking anxiety. I am going to review five articles that touch on various issues surrounding public speaking anxiety. All five of these articles are from Communication journals and are at most five years old.
Literature Review
There have been many studies done on public speaking anxiety in the field of communications. I have chosen these five articles to review because I believe that put together, they give a good background on the recent research done on this subject. The first article looks at student's memories of speeches they have given. The second article looks at how public speaking anxiety affects speech preparation. The third article looks at how speech anxiety changes due to audience pleasantness and familiarity. The fourth article looks at when anxiety actually starts for students given a speech assignment. The fifth article summarizes a study where people with no formal background in communication are asked to explain why people experience public speaking anxiety.
The first article is entitled "Communication apprehension and implicit memories of public speaking state anxiety." Sawyer and Behnke discussed two studies in this article. The first is labeled "Short term memory", and the second is labeled "Long term memory". In study one, their subjects were 44 undergraduate students (22 males, 22 females) that were taking a required basic speech communication class. Each student gave a short two-minute speech to a classroom of 20-25 students. The speeches were videotaped and later played back and reviewed by the instructor. Directly after giving their speeches, the students were asked to fill out Spielberger's (Speilberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1969) STAI (A-State) scale, which asks the student how he/she felt while giving the presentation. They also filled this out several weeks before the speech, on how they felt about public speaking in general. Then they were asked to fill out the scale after class. The results showed that recollections of state speaking anxiety decrease over time.
The second study participants were 40 undergraduate students (20 male, 20 female) enrolled in a basic speech communication course. At the beginnin...
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..., in the first phase. The second phase saw 192 students (52 men, 140 women) ranging from ages 17-48 (avrg. 20).
In the first phase, they asked 42 students to write down reasons why they thought people experienced stage fright. They found the highest rated was the Mistakes factor, followed by Unfamiliar Role, Humiliation, Negative Results, and Rigid Rules.
For the second phase, they collected surveys from 258 students (of which they used 192). The surveys asked questions about how the student felt about public speaking. They categorized 38 of the students as low apprehensives and 41 as high apprehensives.
Conclusions
It is obvious to me that public speaking anxiety is definitely a problem amongst many people. The only study that I read to find out exactly what percentage of students suffer from public speaking anxiety was the last one. That is why I have chosen to research this topic more. I think that their study was well done, but I think there are more students suffering than they found. I did not come across any studies to find what students do to overcome their public speaking anxiety. Which is why I have chosen to research this topic as well.
Davis, S., Shisca, D., & Howell, P. (2007). Anxiety in speakers who persist and recover from stuttering. Journal of Communication Disorders, 40, 398-417.
Communication apprehension (CA) as McCroskey stated it “an anxiety syndrome associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons.” In another word, communication apprehension or speech anxiety is like an anxiety that occurs when an individual is speaking or communicating in front of a group, classroom, or people. However, not every individual will have the same kinds of communication apprehension or anxiety because there are four different types of CA. Dr. Patricia Palmerton stated “The higher score an individual get on the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) developed by McCroskey, the more anxiety that person has toward communication, the scores range from 80-120.” While those with a low
During my demonstration speech, I was affected by my speech anxiety. Some of the viewable symptoms were the shaking of my hands and also the stuttering of speech. I was able to control myself and relax after I started getting into my information. I did use some of the suggested relaxation techniques to relieve my anxiety. Before I got up to speak I thought confident of myself to help give me courage and confidence.
For the aforementioned reasons, there is no doubt that fears and shy had been controlled myself throughout the years. According to The People’s Almanac presents The Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky, Irving and Amy Wallace, one of the topic was titled “The 14 Worst Human Fears”, and the fear of speaking in public is the first fear of all fears (Richard I. Garber, 2009). This make me realized that it is perfectly normal to feel anxiety and fears to speak. Everyone, even an experienced speakers has some anxiety when speaking in front of a group of people. As for my experience and situation, I should have just fight the fears in me to throw my voice out asking questions in class otherwise I would might left behind a bit and need to struggle up for the subjects more than everyone does. Asking questions does not make you any stupid, it’s the source of
I believe that, if I feel nervous in the future, I will not be afraid of this emotion like what I did before. This course provided me knowledge on how to make me relax. Little by little, I have gained the confidence of combating the fear of public speaking in this course. All these precious experience will continue benefiting me in the future. Thus, I am proud to say that I have fullfilled the course objectives and enhanced my public speaking
Introduce Topic: A phobia as defined by medicalnewstoday.com, “is an irrational fear, a kind of anxiety disorder in which the sufferer has a relentless dread of a situation, living creature, place or thing.”
All of us at one point in our life have had a fear of something, whether it’s public speaking, trying something new for the first time, or even presenting just like we're all going to be doing. I'm sure most of us will be nervous and we try our best to get rid of that feeling. Some people have Social anxiety which is known as social phobia. It is the fear of social interaction with other people and of being judged and looked down upon. It can also be a fear of embarrassment. This leads to feelings of inadequacy, self-consciousness, and depression. Social anxiety is an issue that affects many individuals as it should be taken more seriously and should not be considered as a weakness. Moreover, individuals with social anxiety should not be judged
In the article, the authors seek to investigate communication apprehension among secretarial students. Communication apprehension is an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with communication with others (Booth-Butterfield & Thomas, 1995, pp. 1). 39). The syllable of the syllable. The methodological framework utilized by the authors was to administer questionnaires during regular class time in four different sections. This survey included a measure of trait communication apprehension and anxiety across four different areas of interpersonal, small group, meeting and public speaking.
I did have great communication skills but whenever I had to communicate in front of a group of people for some reasons I fail miserably. My public speaking fears had become worst when I got to college. I was required to take a public speaking class which I couldn’t escape in since it was one of the required courses for my degree. My first day on that class is so far the most terrible day of my life. I was asked to introduce myself to the class using only one word to describe me, the moment that my name was called it felt like I was walking into an unfamiliar galaxy. I am standing in front of a classroom full of strangers doing nothing but looking around and
The class helped me learn how to overcome fear of public speaking which was brought about by anxiety and fear which was mainly contributed by lack of exposure. During this class I learned many ways of overcoming this menace, the class groups that served as the audience helped in practicing and getting over the anxiety and fear I also got positive critic...
In public speaking I learned many types of concepts, theories and terms of communication. In concepts of publicly speaking there’s, relaxation, practice, credibility, attention getters, attire, organization, volume, emotion, audience relation, and movement. In my first speech, “The any old bag speech” I quickly learned the do’s, don’ts and concepts of my speech performance.
The term social phobia is described by the presence of anxiety or tendency to experience excessive fear while social interaction is present. Social avoidance is also described as a combination of syndromes performing in a person perceived as embarrassment. The anxiety in the individuals experiencing this type of phobia is cause by the tendency of exaggeration in self-evaluations , having a negative perception of themselves based of their own negative judge. The tendency of being self-critical is lead by fear during social interaction or even during intrapersonal situations. The anticipation of anxiety and fear is often part of a vicious cycle in which persons experience a physical symptom such as blushing, palpitations , sweating, avoiding eye contact and trembling (Heimberg, 1995). However, some persons with social phobia report no physical symptoms of anxiety only self-consciousness and fear.
This essay will assess the different categories of phobias and briefly summarize talk therapy and cognitive behavioral theories regarding attaining and maintenance of phobic disorders. A phobia is an irrational fear that creates internal feeling and apprehension, perceived as real with physiological responses such as heart palpitations, trembling and sweating. Depending upon the severity, phobias may interfere with the level of functioning in various settings: academic, occupational, or at home. It is classified under anxiety disorders with three major categories: agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder and specific phobias. Agoraphobia (AG) consists of fears of being in public places and the individuals’ ability to escape or receive help during a panic episode is limited. Individuals may initially experience one or more panic attacks that typically progress to AG. Clients become reclusive and may avoid situations that create distress and refuse to leave their home. People with AG do enter impending phobic conditions, but only with medication or when escorted by a trusted companion or therapist. They may also have also co-occurring disorders such as obsessions, substance abuse, and depression. Social anxiety disorder (also called social phobia), the most prevalent anxiety disorder, characterized by extreme self-consciousness and excessive fear of being humiliated during social situations with other people or when asked to perform. Symptoms include fear of being judged, blushing, profuse sweating, nausea and other signs of anxiety. Individuals who suffer from social anxiety have an early onset usually during childhood or adolescence. Children may exhibit clingy behaviors or become mute in certain situations. SP pertains to onl...
Learning how to overcome fear through building self esteem and confidence will always have the most important impact to me as a communicator. Public speaking anxiety results into boring and poor speech which is made in hurry. Through my communication lessons I have known how to prepare and practice, get organized, know the details of my topic and learn how to visualize on my success as a communicator in order to beat the fear of public speaking. This in no doubt will have a great impact to me as a motivational
Speaking is a natural ability given to most reluctant individuals. Since the beginning of time, it has been assumed that we have a right to speak and use words, thus we naturally begin our development of language during the early stages of live. After years of grasping and perfecting our vocabulary and language, it seems unnecessary to study the purpose of our development. Why, then, should we study “oral communication?” There are many purposes, benefits, and institutions that branch from oral communication. Of course, communication is the basis of interaction with other individuals through the use of expressions and words; however, through studying oral communication, one can take the words and expressions being used and apply them to his or her own life. After all, the most effective and useful knowledge is applied knowledge.