Become a confident public speaker
Public speaking is something that not everyone has the stomach for. It involves discussion or debates on a topic in a public forum. This requires an individual to not only have excellent speaking skills, but also to be able to present information in a professional and confident manner. If your knees shake and your stomach sinks at the thought of being in the spotlight, it is high time you got over the fear and became a confident orator. In order to speak with authority on any topic, you have to know about it. Using fillers and long winded sentences will undermine your status and hold over the audience. It is important to be able to deliver results; this can be accomplished by speaking calmly and evenly when delivering a speech.
When you are preparing for a public speaking event or assignment, make sure you read up as much as you can. Do not neglect any aspect or content if you want to achieve the best impact. The more you read up, the better you will be able to conduct the discourse. This will also enable you to talk without having too many gaps or too many random words while delivering the speech. Breathe and deliver the words with proper pauses, the audience will not register the pauses you make if you can handle the delivery of the speech and the tone effectively.
Print out the important keywords on flashcards. You may not be able to always gather all the points or present everything in the exact right way. If you feel you are missing some information or want to improve the speech, then you can always do a quick rerun with the flash cards and quickly add on what you want. Checking your notes when you want to recollect a certain idea is not a crime, it is what they are for. Unless you have been instructed that notes will involve some penalization, you may glance at it but not read from it when delivering the speech.
Be the expert. If you want the audience to truly listen and be hooked, you have to deliver the speech with the right impact. Unless you deliver it with confidence and articulate clearly, you cannot be making the impression you wish to. Look people in the eye, draw in their attention with questions and interesting and real facts rather than boring statistics and graphs. It should be content that people can relate to and visualize, to be a powerful speech.
Practice enough and more. There can never be too much practice. When you do it in front of the mirror a few times, you will understand the mannerisms you adopt, any distracting habits you may have between the speech and the expressions you have. Work to adopt a look and feel that is brimming with authority and belief that you are the final authority on the matter without being domineering or aggressive.
