jitters when speaking infront of class room

I get really nervous while presenting stuffin front of class since I hear some of you are teachers do you have any tips to calm your self down when reading long speeches in front of class my english teacher just assigned one that I have to present friday .

Hi Quintos233

I totally sympathise with you. I am a born again student

Several times recently I have had to stand up and talk in front of my year group of 50, and give a presentation. Not something that my previous life has prepared me for.

It's not something I am good at, or enjoy, but I do find that if I know what I'm talking about it helps! I know that sounds obvious, but if you understand your subject, it's one less thing to worry about.

If I haven't a clue what I'm talking about, even if I'm reading it, I am absolutely rubbish and can't get the intonation right, let alone the words

Will you be reading, or talking ad lib, or answering questions? Or all of these?

It does get easier, I have to say. The more you do it, and the more you see others doing it, the less you worry.

Not much help, I know, but just remember, everyone else will be feeling equally as nervous I'm sure, you're not alone. Just become ultra familiar with your topic and you'll be fine.

Good luck

Jo

Quintos, as Jo-Anne said read your text over and over again out loud to yourself, so that you totally familiarise yourself with what you'll be reading out. Pay attention to your breathing on the day you give the speech. Try breathing in slowly through your nose, hold it for a couple of seconds and then breath out through your mouth or nose holding for a couple of seconds again. If you concentrate on doing this five or six times every ten minutes or so in the house up to you actually giving your speech, you'll find it will help you to relax which makes you feel less nervous. Also, try not to think about the fact that you feel nervous - distract yourself in some way i.e. plan your next trip to Spain or think about something else that interests you, rather than thinking about the fact that you feel nervous. Hope this helps you.

Know where your coming from! In the USA giving a speech in class would make me a little nervous-nut too much. BUT now I am here at Universidad de Granada this semester, and yesterday I had to give a 25minute speech in historia- in spanish in front of native spaniards. WOA now for this one, I was a wreck. I seriously thought I was going to lose it!! Some things that helped me out...
-Practice once the morning of, but then put it away until you are up there- dont overdo it. Think about something else!
-If you are worried about pronunciation of any specific words (I was!), write out the phonetic equivalence so you can remember when you are up there and the pressure is on.
-Practice in front of people beforehand. I made my poor host family listen to it a zillion times before I gave it!!
Good luck!! Also, may help to keep in mind that almost everybody gets nervous, but most of time, nobody else can even tell!

Commit a couple of your opening remarks to memory

Begin by introducing yourself.

Ask the audience to hold their questions until the end of your presentation. This should help avoid interruptions.

Look at (make eye contact with) your audience and try to measure their reaction;

Try to act as you normally would in a one-on-one conversation.

It's all right to be nervous - it's good to be nervous - it shows that you are serious about what you say - just try not to 'freeze up.' That's what Bernard Vorenberg (one of the founders of the Actors Studio and my Speech teacher at NYU) taught me almost 50-years ago

Eddie's points are key to being a good public speaker, using this framework early on as a novice will make you a better speaker.

There's only one point I'd change. Instead of looking the audience in the eyes, I suggest looking at their foreheads if you have several feet between you. To them, it still appears as eye contact, even though it allows you the opportunity of avoiding it directly. As your speech continues, and you gain more confidence, you may switch to eye contact if you feel comfortable doing it. Like Eddie said, it does give you the pulse of your audience.

Another point to remember is that you should have researched your topic very well, and more than likely know a lot more about it than the average person in the audience, so you are presenting facts that you feel they should know. In other words, you've become the "expert" on the issue.

The keyword is "confidence," and that comes when you know your subject. By using the starting point that Eddie has suggested, you won't stray from the subject, and won't be at a loss for words to follow up on your initial statements. I would add.... you may want to put together a basic outline of where you intend going with the oration. If you do that, and you do have a moment where you are nervous, you can glance at the outline, and it will bring you back to where you belong. If the speech must be given without notes, the opening statements, as Eddie indicated, "must be memorized," to insure continuity.

Excellent post Eddie. It was fantastic information back then, and still is.

Wolf

I only have pupils of 15 à 18 years, but they are a very(!)critical public. They don't spare you when you are a bad teacher and I had to learn everything by myself. Here we say (translated from Dutch) "experience is the best school where you can learn".
Nobody, except maybe a native speaker, is perfect from the first time.

I agree with Wolf. Eye contact is very important to get the public on your hand, but if you feel nervous, you could try the way he proposed.

I know this is difficult for a beginner, but when you make some jokes while you talk --> always success and the listeners will be more attentive. When your public is listening, you will feel more comfortable and your presentation will come over very natural.

When you show slides during your speech, pay attention to speak to your audience, not to the wall. Be expressive: use your hands, make movements...

Just like Eddy said try to act as you normally would in a one-on-one conversation.

Good luck!

Quintos233, one of the things I teach my students is how to give an oral presentation. It's so rarely taught - it's as if teachers believe you can just DO it! I'm glad you asked for help!

One of the things I have my students do is take on online tutorial to get them started. You can find it here: http://business.englishclub.com/presentations-intro.htm Even though it was written for business people, I find it's very helpful for any type of oral presentation.
I have the kids take notes on a worksheet I've written, but they're younger than you are, so let's skip the worksheet! You'll notice that many of the excellent recommendations already mentioned here are there as well.

I hope it helps, and good luck on Friday!

Read Dale Carnegie's "Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking". Two tips he came up with are:

1) Earn the right to talk about that which you're presenting. This means you have to pay the price. Coming in and trying to motivate others to action or decision on something that you haven't earned the right to talk about is oral suicide.

2) Get right into the incident from which you'll be teaching the concept, etc. Then, in roughly 10-15 seconds at the end of your presentation, invite the audience to action, and describe the benefit to them of taking that action.

Example: I could tell you about my pilgrimage last year to Santiago. Add some detail, talk about sticking it out though the first three days gave us solid rain. I've earned the right, and am eager to talk to you about this (because I've earned the right). Then I tell you to learn about it, or go, or take a trip to Spain, etc., giving you a benefit, just one, as a result of the action you take.

[P.S. Works well for a talk to motivate, inspire, direct, etc. Not too great on things like explaining how something works, etc.]

In addition to all the tips above, I try to do a couple of additional things when I am going to be speaking in front of a class. First, I always have a drink (tea--make sure it's not too hot--is my favorite) with me. For me, the hardest times are awkward pauses...and rather than saying "um..." over and over again, I take a sip of a drink. This is also a good way to buy time to think about how to respond to a question. A person asks a question and you nod, look at them, smile, take a sip of your drink, THINK, and then respond. If you can't do this in class, you can still smile and pause before you talk/answer questions.

I also look for opportunities to get the group "on my side" by soliciting participation in non-threatening ways. Don't ask "quiz-like" questions, but ask gentle, easy questions (in a child psychology class, when discussing discipline strategies, I might look at a student and gently ask, "can you give me an example of a time when you have seen a parent disciplining a child in a public place?"). If you put these questions in your notes, they are a great way to transition from topic to topic. You don't have to say, "now we are going to talk about discipline strategies," you can instead let the student lead the group into the next topic. And if your questions are gentle, students don't feel threatened by them. If a student hesitates or looks uncomfortable, smile and direct the question to the student sitting next to them.

When you're trying to get student participation, be PATIENT! If you ask a question and nobody jumps right in with an answer, BE QUIET. Take a sip of your drink, look around the room, and WAIT. Students are uncomfortable with silences, and if you wait a bit, someone will speak up. It's always really awkward to ask for student participation and then have nobody speak--but YOU shouldn't feel uncomfortable, they should!

Also, you should keep in mind that even the typical adult cannot focus on one thing for more than about 15 minutes. After that, even the best students' minds wander to grocery lists, sports scores, etc. If you structure your lecture/discussion to include some variety (lecture for 5 minutes, then ask students to write down the most important point and discuss it with their neighbor, then talk again for a few minutes, then ask students to help you create a list of examples on the blackboard, etc.), you will find that the group stays on task and you feel more confident. If you have to face a bunch of people who are getting sleepy, fidgeting, etc., you start feeling unsure of yourself.

Finally, try to smile. I wholeheartedly believe that this does two things--first, it makes your audience feel kind toward you, and second, I think it fools you into thinking YOU are having a good time!

Good luck!

tara: Make sure that your drink is a)non-alcoholic, and b)not followed up with three bran muffins...especially if your speech is to be lengthy.

Thanks for the help guys I really appreciate it. Now lets see how I do on that speech

Excellent words of advice everyone! This information is great!!!! It will definitely help me in the future. Thanks

Quintos,after all these posts, we of course expect to hear from you how you did it.

It's a little late for this advice now, but I tell my students to find the students in the class they most trust not to laugh at them...not their friends, and most certainly not their enemies, but the generally good kids, perhaps ones that are somewhat shy themselves, and try to deliver your message to them. Since they are usually scattered about, you maintain some eye contact with the crowd and since these kids aren't likely to make you laugh or torment you, you feel relaxed. After a while you won't NEED to find friendly faces to give a talk, but it never hurts to have them out there!

...of course as an educator, you can always threaten them with bodily harm or detention if they laugh at you. What if you're a student?

I keep a big baseball bat in my room for such "special occasions"...

I often have to present to the staff at the end of the day. You want to talk about a hostile crowd and the need for baseball bats!!!! There is nothing worse than talking to your peers... as a student, teacher, or anything else! And I STILL look for the faces I can trust (provided that the head the face is on is not asleep on the desktop!)

I did decent in the speech I didn't get to nervous but I still need a little work on my relaxing skills.

Good for you!!! I'll bet the crowd didn't even know you were nervous!
Relaxing in front of a group you're speaking to comes with time and lots of practice!

Just remember that you KNOW that you can now cope with it;

Hola Quintos,

When ever I speak I always get the jitters. What I do is I observe the audience , each one with eye contact then I tell a simple clean joke that gets them relaxed as well I ,then go on. Always speak on what you know well. I know this reply is late. Chao

As a former horribly shy person, I used to have the same problems with speaking in front of a group (even of one!). I took speech in high school, but it just made me a wreck. Finally I ended up teaching Yoga and had to talk every day (I had eight classes per week!) to a group. I pulled it off because: 1)I loved the subject, 2) I knew the material cold, 3) I was really motivated to share what I knew, and 4) my audience was interested in the subject.

After that experience I ended up teaching martial arts for several years, and eventually became a licensed Instructor/Coordinator in Emergency Medical Services Technician training. It helped me in my work as a Systems Analyst where I often had to explain technical aspects of computer systems, and generally made me an extrovert.

I think the information presented before is really, really good. The most important thing, I think is to know your subject, and have enthusiasm for it. This will be communicated to your audience, and they will respond. After that you will be on a roll. The problem is when you are not sure of your expertise and the audience senses this. Speaking in public will give you immense feed-back, positive or negative, depending on how you start your speech. What ever you do, DON't try to fake something you aren't sure of. Admit you don't know, and go on. You will be seen as an honest person, and this will add to your credibility.

Good luck, it comes with practice. As my mother used to say, "Dread doing it is the worst!"