Writing a Speech and a Fear of Speaking in Public

No matter where you study, in a university or in a college, you will need to write speeches from time to time. There are many students who are afraid of public speaking, which is what stops them even at the stage of preparing their speech. We know what you’re afraid of, but we want to say that you have a choice. You don’t need to stay paralyzed, imaging yourself talking in front of a hundred people. Instead, you can just follow a few simple rules, focus on your research and think of who are people you’re talking to.

Choose a Focused Topic

Choosing a proper topic is, probably, the most important thing. When you choose a topic that is really interesting for you, you significantly increase your chances to deliver an effective speech that will impress your audience. However, there are many students who have problems even with this first step, and this is the main reason why they fail. If you have no idea of what a proper topic should look like, let’s start with the simplest yet crucial rule — your topic must be focused.

Suppose, you need to prepare a ten-minute speech. You need to tell your audience about some important problem, and you decided to write a speech about global warming. You feel a great inspiration, you go to a library, take a bunch of books, open your laptop… and suddenly you realize that you don’t know where to start.

It’s a common problem, and such a problem may seem to ruin your plans just because your topic isn’t narrow enough, it isn’t focused. Global warming is indeed an important issue, but it is also comprehensive and diverse. It’s hard to address this issue properly in just ten minutes. It’s not a problem to find enough material for a ten-minute speech on global warming, but your audience won’t learn anything in particular from it, because your speech will be too broad.

To solve this problem, you need to narrow your topic and focus on a certain aspect of global warming that can be addressed in ten minutes. For example, focus on consequences of global warming in Arctic regions, however, this topic may be still too broad. Decide to deliver a speech about melting of ice caps in the Arctic Ocean during the last ten years, and this topic will finally be focused enough.

The whole process of narrowing your topic looks like this: global warming — global warming in the Arctic — melting of ice caps in the Arctic — melting of ice caps during the last 10 years.

Analyze Your Audience

You also need to understand the specifics of your audience. Depending on who they are, what they are interested in, and what is their level of education, you may want to change your arguments. You need to use methods that will be effective when talking to a particular audience, and you need to choose the appropriate information.

For example, when talking to undergraduates, the academic level of your speech will differ from that when talking to Ph.D. holders. In the latter case, you will be able to provide more details and make your analysis more accurate. In case of undergraduates, you may need to provide more information on the background of your subject.

We also suggest choosing different methods depending on the type of your audience. For example, if your audience is already familiar with the topic of your presentation, you may use various additional materials to make your speech more interesting for them.