Being the Best Science Communicators We Can Be…
Tips and Tricks to Communicating your Passion
The Dreaded Public Speaking Anxiety…
If you were to Google: Public Speaking Anxiety, you would find that it comes up with approximately 123,000,000 results.
When talking about public speaking anxiety, performance anxiety, glossophobia, whatever you want to call it, there are two pathways a lot of these results go down. Either how to get rid of it, or why it happens.
We read about the physiological symptoms that we are all too familiar with, the pounding heart rate, the restless stomach and the excessive sweating. We read about the negative mental state: “What if I fail?”, “What if everyone laughs at me?” “What if I forget my speech?”.
Then, we learn that these responses are part of the evolutionary mechanism to protect us from harmful situations, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in so that we can either fight the threat, run away, or freeze - which people generally don’t want to do during a presentation.
As young adults, most of us have experienced public speaking anxiety in one form or another. Finding a way to approach it in a way that is unique can be quite challenging. No one wants to hear the same old rhetoric about the nervous system, and the fight or flight response. I certainly don’t.
Our workshop, “the Science of Language” was designed to approach performance anxiety as a tool, and remind us that that pounding feeling in the chest isn’t something to fear - but something to learn from.
We were fortunate enough to have guest speaker, comedian Alanta Colley, https://www.alantacolley.com , join us and share some of her hilarious stories. As a comedian, public speaking pretty much comes with the territory, and we were excited to hear some of her tips.
Having traveled the world, Alanta tells the story of the time she was working in Uganda, teaching water safety, resulting in her contracting not one, but multiple different parasites. Despite this being a pretty terrible experience all round, she was inspired to combine science and her love of comedy, creating a show all about the incident.
She talks about how when public speaking, like in life, failure can actually be funny, and a great way for your audience to relate to you. It shouldn’t be something to AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
Additionally, ditching the jargon, when speaking to non-experts and adding personal anecdotes is another way to captivate the audience.
Though the audience is important to consider (RE: Workshop 1), these tips also focus on YOU, the speaker, and take some of the pressure off.
… And How you can BEAT IT
With that being said, here are some tips that we went through in the Workshop.
Tips to give a great presentation
Practice in front of a mirror
Record yourself
Avoid sounding scripted
Using audience interaction: ask a question, Get them to raise their hands, an activity
Try an entertaining sentence opener, a story, or a fact
Dressing the part!
A lot of these tips aim to not only engage the audience, but help warm up the speaker as well.
Group exercises to improve public speaking confidence
Over communication: participants would tell the same story in different ways: shy, passionate etc.
Mini-Speech: participants would be tasked with having to talk about a science topic they were passionate about, with little to no preparation.
Telephone: focusing on body language communication, without words
To learn more about Public Speaking Anxiety, check out this website
We look forward to you joining us for the third, and final workshop leading up to the Let’s Torque Public Speaking Competition, WS3: Design, Delivery and Display.
https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/920635?bof=1