My Public Speaking Skills

Communication provides people with the crucial opportunity to interact with each other socially, solve problems, and inform each other. Mastering the skills involved in four major areas of communication, public speaking, group communication, interpersonal communication, and computer mediated communication, gives people the chance to share their ideas to a captive audience. My public speaking skills are lagging, which is why I am setting my goal to develop my public speaking skills. My group communication skills are better but still could use some improvement. It is in interpersonal communication and computer mediated communication that I am able to best communicate my thoughts. My communication skills improve as the audience gets smaller and

My writing often reveals a lot about me, whether it is through what I am talking about or how I talk about it, so getting immediate, and often very honest, feedback in front of an audience of people causes me to freeze, or stutter, or shake, or forget what I am talking about all together. Sometimes I suppress these fears, allowing me to avoid all the physical stammers. However, usually my nerves consume my thoughts during my speech, leaving the audience to pity me and my quite obvious anxiety. I have yet to discover a foolproof tactic to overcome these fears. My goal for this semester is to cure my speech anxiety to a degree where my speeches are presented fluidly. I find that being passionate about a topic makes it easier for me to present with confidence, so I plan to build up techniques to make each topic interesting for me. Also, knowing my speech word-for-word helps me be a better speaker. It actually makes me confident enough to stray from my speech, because I know I have a rehearsed speech as a safety net incase the free-style speech starts to crumble, or my nerves start to affect my thinking. Therefore, I will spend more time memorizing my speeches before I present

Sarcasm can be a useful tool to help prove a point; however, it can also come off as rude or belittling. Occasionally I do not present my sarcasm clearly, causing people to believe I am trying to be rude. When I am not being sarcastic, or I am able to present my sarcasm correctly, my interpersonal communication skills are exceptional. I am able to get people to talk about themselves as much as I want, and I am able to avoid awkward silences with questions or my own conversation. In an argument situation, I excel at staying calm and continuing to use my arguments to support my