For this oral presentation, I felt that I was still a little bit nervous. Before the presentation, I kept telling myself to treat this as a normal conversation. I had practised a few times myself in front of the mirror. After few practices, I was able to memorize the content fairly well. It was pretty smooth and fluent.
At first, I thought that I was ready and confident to present in the class. However, when I was presenting in front of everyone, I felt so tense that I thought there were many pairs of eyes staring at me. My body seemed to be out of control, hands started moving and shaking uncontrollably Luckily, Jac reminded me not to fidget. After a while, I managed to calm down and continued the presentation.
However, I felt that this time was much better compared to my first mock presentation. I believed that ‘Practice make perfect’. If I have a chance to rehearse and present more in the class, it will definitely help me to overcome the nervousness.
Overall, this was a valuable experience and provided me with necessary skills which would help in my future presentations.
Thanks Michael for the honest sharing. I believe that you did a great job in your presentation. You made an effort to maintain good eye contact with your audience and you had a good posture which exudes confidence. In fact, I did not realize that you were shaking uncontrollably but felt that you were calm and collected… A pat on the back for you (:However, it would be good if you had spoken more naturally as it was clear that during some parts you had memorized what you planned to say. Moreover, do be careful with your pronunciation, such as words like “preliminary” and “public”. If you feel tense and find it hard to pronounce the words, consider speaking slower and pausing more often instead so as to calm yourself. Overall, I am really impressed by how much you have grown as a professional communicator ever since I had known you. Don’t be too hard on yourself as I felt that you did a great job.
ReplyDeleteOn the hindsight, I was wondering why your presentation only lasted no more than 2 minutes; shorter than the rest?
Cheers!
Hey Michael,
ReplyDeleteI thought you were clear, concise and in control of your content. But I could see that you were nervous, it showed quite clearly especially at the start. But otherwise you were really good.
Cheers
Michael!!! You did well! I know you were nervous; I could see it when your arms started swinging. But don't worry, because you managed to calm yourself down quite well! Really well done! I think you were slow-paced and clear with your content, making it easier for the audience to digest your words. That was really helpful for me=).
ReplyDeleteNontheless, as mentioned earlier, you were slightly shifty because of your inconfidence, which I know you have to get used to after the first few minutes of presenting. So don't worry, you're not that bad! =)
Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteI know this is no easy topic to speak on. I can see your effort in working out the cost-benefit which was in the end not used either.
Anyway, I felt that you had a very strong singlish accent. One thing you can work on is diction. The other would be your grammar. Once you have those two, I believe you'll be very much less nervous.
Hey Michael,
ReplyDeleteIt is evident that you've improved tremendously over the duration of this course - and you're that much closer to being an excellent presenter in the future.
Although your nervousness was observable and you had a significant degree of "singlish" accent, all these shouldn't hinder you from future presentations as long as you present yourself as confident. As you have said - practice makes perfect!!
In future presentations, do continue to make a conscious effort to reduce the number of words (and pictures) in each slide too. Even though there is a small amount of words, the sheer number of pictures can be overwhelming at times too. This can be distracting and causes the audience to lose focus on what you're presenting.
Nonetheless, I reiterate that i've seen a whole world of a difference with your presentation. Keep up the good work, Michael!!
@Eunice,
ReplyDeleteThanks Eunice for the advise.
I agreed that I would clearly if I had memorized the content well. I think you are right,slowly slowing down would help me to clam down and speak clearly.
@Uttara and Jac,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.
I knew that I was nervous at begging, but I am sure with more practices,I would be able to overcome this problem.
@michelle and ben,
ReplyDeleteI knew that I had a singlish accent, I guessed it was due to the environment that I grown up with (Singapore) which was hard for me to change now. I agreed with ben that singlish should not be a hinder to me, as it did not my ability of doing work.Presenting more confidently is something that I need to work on.
What struck me the most about Michael's part of the presentation was how short it seemed compared with those of the rest of his teammates. That hardly seems fair. Michael should have been given more air-time and more opportunity to shine.
ReplyDeleteThanks Isaac ...
ReplyDeleteHello Michael!!!! I am here to comment on your blog! :D
ReplyDeleteMichael! I think your slides are short, simple and easy for me to understand. Though you are nervous initially, you still managed to bring your points across to the audience. I will suggest to you that in future if you feel nervous, try to smile as it can help to reduce the anxiety in you. Or you can get your friends or family to role play as your audience. Ask them to purposely give "black-face" or boring faces. Try to present in front of them till you overcome the nervousness and not having doubts about yourself. Since they are not involved in the project, you can also test and see if they can understand about your group's proposal.
For the presentation, I will suggest to you to relate it like story-telling. Maybe memorise the keypoints but not everything. Then using the keypoints and explain them in your own words will be much easier to manage.
From last thursday, I can see that you really worked hard in improving your presentation skills. Me too, I have problems speaking clearly and sometimes pronouce words wrongly because of my bucktooth. But all these problems are possible to overcome! So from today onwards, let's work hard to improving our pronounication!
Jia you! Michael! :)
Hello Michael!
ReplyDeleteI thought you exhibited good confidence during the presentation even though you were nervous initially.
There were times where I felt you had memorised the slides and was trying had to recall it but I think you could work on it by remembering key words. I also had this problem during my preparation for the OP and I felt that instead of memorising exact sentences, by remembering key words helped in delivering my slides smoothly.
Overall,it was a job well done :)
Hey Michael! Great effort that day dude =) You deserve a pat on the back.
ReplyDeleteI know it is never easy to calm down before and during a presentation. We have to have good eye contact, deliver the contents, maintain good body posture and even manage the audience with our tone and pace. The only way to achieve good stage performance is to off-load these processes from your main processing portion of your fore-brain to the muscle memory. We can practice good posture, voice and smile in our daily communication so that these become a part of us. Thus when it comes to an actual presentation, we just have to juggle the content and manage the audience.
You and I share a similar problem of having Chinese as our main spoken language while English as the main writing language. Thus, our speech often has a Chinese accent and our Chinese background causes our words to be too ‘solid’ and lack the kind of flow of a more fluent English speaker.
I believe with more practice and experience, you can be a great presenter.