Bad Speeches

I know that I absolutely hate public speaking. So when we were given the speech assignment last week, nothing but nerves filled my body. While giving my speech on Thursday, I was pretty sure my nerves were visible.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one to feel this way. I could overhear many people in the class expressing how nervous they were as well. Well good news, the speeches were great. Everyone knew what they were talking about, picked amazing commercials, made eye contact consistently, and kept good body posture.

Even  if you aren't very confident in your performance, at least you can take pride knowing that you are a better public speaker than our former President, George W. Bush:

Politics aside, George W. Bush is a terrible public speaker. He received harsh criticism from almost everyone for his inability to pronounce words, how often he stumbled on words, and his thick accent, which can be extremely hard to understand. Although you can blame some of this on nerves, President Bush probably should have learned to get rid of them after eight years in office.

He is one of the best examples of what not to do in a speech. In order to be successful when publicy speaking, you must make sure you're confident enough in yourself to keep from letting nerves harm your speech.

The only way to guarentee this confidence is practice, practice and more practice. It is also helpful to know when you plan to make eye contact, move your hands and body, and make sure you do not include any words that may trip you up when the nerves do kick in. If necessary, practice in front of a mirror. That definetly helped me when I prepared for our ad analysis speech. Do whatever it takes to have some confidence in yourself. 

So maybe you aren't able to enstill this confidence in yourself. At least you can take pride in knowing that you're probably a better public speaker than a man that once ran our country.