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Tariq Rafique

"A confident speaker can handle weak areas of ppt presentation".

Usually, in a presentation we speak to a group of people in one of three situations: (1)When we are doing most of the speaking ourselves either to inform or to persuade, (2) when we have more give and take with our audience, to answer questions, or (3) when we solve problems as a group. Certainly, most people would agree that terms such as speech or lecture imply that the speaker is doing most of the talking.
All the presentations can not be perfect. There can be some weak areas in the presentation, which can decrease the credibility of the speaker but a confident speaker can handle weak areas of presentation by his confidence. There are many ways to boost the confidence during the presentation.
Speaking in front of an audience is not an easy job, however, good preparation before a presentation is essential to boost our confidence during our speech. Following are some suggestion to boost one’s level of confidence in front of an audience.

Usually, we are given a speech topic in advance. It can be a couple of weeks before. If so, we should make use of the ample time given to do some proper research. There are many ways to research on our topic. We can check out the daily newspapers for example, and cut out any relevant materials that we might need. With the advent of technology these days, we can easily research for our speech materials online as well. Also, we can check out E-Journals and news articles from various portals.

It is always good to know who we are presenting to. If we are presenting to a big audience, who are the main groups our topic is targeting on, It is only inevitable that each person from the audience has his or her own insights, experiences, goals or attitudes towards different subject matters. As such, we might want to conduct a survey if we have their contacts (presuming they are our classmates for example). In our survey, we can include “age group”, “ethnicity”, “occupation”, “hobbies” and so on, depending on the relevance to our speech topic. Once we compiled the survey, we will get a clearer picture of how our audience group is like, and “tailor” our speech accordingly.

Sufficient knowledge about topic

We should do remember to adhere to our speech topic at any time of our research. Do not digress and go into unnecessary details. Make sure we know the focus of our speech topic and what it requires of our research. For example, a topic like “Healthcare for the Elderly” should focus mainly on “healthcare” and “elderly”. We should do our research accordingly and not deviate from the topic requirements.

Good preparation

Depending on the necessity of the topic, it is always good to complement our speech with visuals like PowerPoint slides. Other than complementing, it actually allows the audience to have a clearer understanding of our speech. Note that our content on the slides should be minimal. We can organize and put them in point form. This will allow the audience to have a clear grasp of our topic. Do not bore them with too much verbosity (wordiness) in our slides. They should concentrate on the speaker more. Visual aids like pictures, video clips, graphs and statistics can be employed to enhance our presentation and make it more comprehensible and interesting at the same time. On the contrary, try to avoid adding visual “distractions” like cartoon animations. More importantly, the slide transitions must be smooth.

Standby Media

Best way to prepare a presentation is preparing some speech cards in hand, unless we are trying to say that we can speak without looking at our slides and not stutter or miss out any relevant information. Preparing speech cards actually allow us to be more organized on our speech content and ensure that we do not overlook any important pointers. Make sure our speech card is written clearly. Moreover, there should not be long sentences written all over the cards. Otherwise, we might get our self confused.

Rehearsal

Any good performer or speaker would definitely need to rehearse to prevent any “hiccups” during the presentation. We might want to speak in front of a mirror and check our gestures when we speak. We can even choose to rehearse our speech in front of a close friend. As such, we get to receive feedback and know what we should work on to improve our speech. This can help the speaker in gaining confidence by which he can cover the weak areas of presentation.