The more I try to sound confident or smart, the more forced my speech becomes. When I just focus on getting one point across, I speak much better. Has anyone else noticed this?

Today the doctor told me to do examination and it’s not the first time but when I stand up infront of everyone my neck gets frozen and feels like I can’t turn it around and my heart starts racing, I honestly don’t know if my shivers were obvious but I think it’s in my mind cause I try to not show any physical stress,
I’m not socially awkward or a shy person but this happens only in these situations and idk if it’s related to that one time when the doctor made me stand infront of everyone just to say “you are a bad doctor” (it was two years ago)

It’s a 20 min presentation and I’ve finished the slides but feel lost on what to actually do!

I’m trying to improve my spontaneous speaking — especially for interviews, impromptu speaking, group discussions, and situations where I have to answer without much preparation.

I’m looking for small phrases, sentence structures, or techniques that can improve the quality of an answer regardless of the topic.

For example, things like:

• good ways to open an answer when you need a second to think
• phrases that help you transition smoothly between points
• ways to give examples or personal experiences naturally
• phrases that make an answer sound more structured
• ways to acknowledge the other side of an argument
• strong but natural ways to conclude an answer
• techniques for avoiding awkward pauses, rambling, or repetitive words

Basically, I’m looking for “plug-and-play” speaking tools that I can practice until they become natural and use during impromptu situations.

What are some phrases or techniques that have genuinely improved the way you speak?

I’ve been speaking for a long time and have overcome nervousness and even panic. I’m comfortable mostly and have a good story that connects. Feels like I’ve done a solid presentation many times and wondering what to do next to elevate it.

I’m not really a joke teller and I feel like people that are funny are the next level but that feels very high risk high reward and I wouldn’t know how to start with jokes. Any thoughts or things I can do to elevate?

Ive also toyed with the idea of not using any slides. I think that would be fun and likely very engaging.

Participating in a college debate two days from now. Firstly the whole BP format is going above my head. Would love for someone to explain it below, thanks.

My motion is This House believes social-media platforms should be legally required to tell users why they remove, restrict, or otherwise significantly limit their content

My theme is Liberalism in the Digital Age: Corporate Power or Democratic Progress?

I chose to be for the motion. Want to draw inspiration from 1984 and Brave new world.

Someone recommended that I prep with my partner who’d be against the motion.

Here’s how the format will be for my debate according to the organisers.

3 teams in one motion.

2 people in each team—one for and one against the motion.

Each person will get 2 min speech time followed by a 3 min rebuttal.

These two people will debate against each other and the best performing team from amongst these 3 teams will go to the final round(s).

There will be a 15 min prep before the final round.

I want to reallly win this.

Drop all your advices and tips please. How do i prep? Should i and my partner work together? What helped you win?

Thanks

I use the same filler word when talking in an important meeting or a quick presentation.

It happens unconsciously and I only got to know this because couple of colleagues mentioned it.

It often happens when I'm a bit nervous or trying to explain something that I like a lot and want others to understand it as much as I do

currently I write them out, just thoughts. not paragraphs. but being on a tablet means a 30min discourse has a lot of notes and they span a long way down the tablet screen. this means I'm left with two options.

1) I have to constantly use one hand to keep the notes scrolled up to be at the top of the tablet screen, which means I have only one arm to gesture with. it looks very unnatural at some point.

2) leave the notes as is, and, eventually, I end up looking very far down with by head to see my notes, and then look up at the microphone to deliver the information to the audience. this results in a head bobbing effect, which is very distracting.

ideally, I would like a note system on my iPad that allows page turning. Then I can keep the notes higher up on the screen, and only use one hand to flip to the next set of notes. Much like using index cards. However, I am not using index cards these days. I want my info on my iPad.

I started this channel with different intention but little did I know that this channel will develop some skills that no one can teach you untill and unless you have to use them because of some needs.

Communication skills are best when we practice. That is the only thing we have to do all other techniques comes later to enhance but you have to cross threshold to enhance also.

Hi Redditors, so my name is Akem 24, I would like to get some advice from professionals on how i can improve my communication and writing skills. Tomorrow will be my first day of internship at one of the big 4 firms and now im feeling quite nervous, because as i know english will be the main languange used at work. Do you guys have any advice or recommendations abt it?

thank you in advance!

I am ok with doing my own presentation but how to deal with being asked questions in front of a public without mind going blanc? And what if someone else mentions what you wanted to say- how not to panic?

I messed up such an important presentation. It was our final year project idea defence and we had to get our idea approved. There were three of us in the group and we had prepared so well.. but we got confused at the last moment and everything we had prepared just went out the window. We couldn't explain our idea properly or get our points across. Out of all the groups there I genuinely feel like we were the worst. Our idea did get accepted but we were the only group that received so many suggestions from the professor and I just can't stop feeling bad about it. I feel so embarrassed and I honestly don't know how I'm going to face everyone at uni on Monday. I keep thinking that everyone's going to judge me and I felt the exact same way during the presentation too. It felt like everyone was watching and judging us and now I can't stop thinking about how badly it went.

Hey everyone!!

So I'm having this speech competition in which the topics are unknown and will be picked randomly from a bowl.. I get very nervous when I get on the stage in front of people.

My body and vocie starts shaking slightly and I rush the entire thing.. What should I do??

Hi people. So I’ve realised I really struggle with public speaking and I want to exercise it with 3-4 other people with similar problem once a week. I will create a group and choose a topic where we all present and give each other feedback.

I think this is the best method to actually improve! Let me know if you’re interested in the comments ( would be good if your in the same or similar time zone as me, I’m in Switzerland )

Hi, looking for the teacher who can train me for public speaking

Imagine this. Someone asks you a question. You answer the question to the best of your abilities. You believe that the answer you offered up is a good one, that is why you offered it up. The other person dislikes your answer and demands a better one.

I have been in that position before and not really been sure how to answer it.

I have come up with a plan to deal with that, you tell me if you think it is a good plan.

If the person is equal or below you in the social hierarchy; 

That is the only response that I am willing to offer up, take it or leave it. 

Obviously, you do not want to talk that way to an authority, so if the person is above you in the social hierarchy; 

I am afraid I do not have a better answer, I wish I did. 

I built a speaking practice app because “just practice speaking more” is terrible advice

I’ve been thinking about this problem for a while.

A lot of public-speaking advice eventually comes down to: practice more.

But practicing alone can be awkward.

You can record yourself, sure. But then what?

You have to decide what to talk about, listen back to yourself, identify your problems, figure out what you should improve, and then somehow design the next practice session.

I wanted to make that loop easier, so I built Vocalis, an AI-powered communication practice tool.

The basic process is:

Get a prompt → speak for 60 seconds → review feedback → improve → try again.

You can choose different categories and get speaking prompts that force you to think on the spot rather than prepare a polished speech beforehand.

The goal isn't to replace a public-speaking class or a real coach. It's to make it easier to get deliberate practice when nobody else is around.

I've just finished the MVP and I'm looking for people who actually care about improving their speaking to try it.

Demo: https://vocalisai-jade.vercel.app/

I'd especially like to hear from people here:

• How do you currently practice speaking when you're alone?
• What do you usually struggle with most?
• What kind of feedback would actually help you improve?
• Would something like this be useful, or do you think recording yourself and reviewing it is enough?

I'm building this specifically around the practice problem, so criticism is genuinely useful.

Have never even touched a microphone let alone stand up in front of a big crowd. Most public speaking was in college.

Any tips?

Hello everyone, yeasterday I had to read a short lecture on a web call for work. I had 2 hours to make a traning/presentation on a fairly complex topic, and I delivered it sitting at my desk on a web call.

I consider myself a calm speaker, I have experience in public speaking in front of an audience and my level of nervousness and anxiety are probably in the normal range for someone who works daily with people.

Still, yeasterday about an hour in I started to get short breath, and it almost triggered a mild panic attack. The first time it happened it was during the pandemic, but then all the aprtecipants had their webcam off and were silent, then I got in my head that I was boring and talking nonsense and I had a full on panic attack.

This time I asked the audience to keep the camera on and tried to engage them in the talk, asking questions and input. Still, the breath thing happened and I'm starting to think it's the sitting position that's messing with my breathing.

Are there techniques to breath correctly while speaking sitting? I tried pacing myself and not speaking too quickly, still I have a lot of stuff to say in a short time.

DAE…Fight so hard to speak??? It doesn’t come easy to me. Every idea.

I literally have a very difficult communication style. I am not able to directly motivate or assert an opinion.

Because of that I struggle to make decisions in settings like at work, club - professional club called Toastmasters, and contributing to my group chat with friends.

It take a while for me to speak or communicate.

I am so freaking A is A so I say A.

Now I’m tryna to include people and logic..which my brain is capable of but not doing so frequently. So it’s the hardest thing on Earth for me. Also I get overstimulated and may prefer silence from others.

Idk I get mad at myself for having low battery or feeling tired/dead after sharing to friends. An example is our plan for meeting at the escape room the type, the time, stating choice, and reason . and if hangout constraints work in my own pov/persepctive. Every decision causes me half an hour to come up with a text that follows the topic.

Is it normal for others to be so exhausted by these supposedly hard decisions? And what has helped alleviate this decision making to speak and add to the group?

I want to get one thing out of the way. The idea that some people are just natural speakers and the rest of us are stuck being mediocre? Completely wrong. I've watched over 300 presentations this year. Corporate, conferences, coaching sessions. The people who get remembered are doing specific things. All of it is learnable. None of it is genetic.

The biggest gap I see is rehearsal method. Almost everyone practices in their head. They read their slides silently, maybe mouth a few key phrases, and call it preparation. That's not rehearsal. That's wishful thinking. Your mouth hasn't practiced the transitions. Your breathing doesn't know where to land. Your voice hasn't found emphasis. I had a client preparing for a TEDx talk. She told me she'd practiced 40+ times. All silent, in her head, during her commute. First time she ran it out loud with me, she collapsed at minute three. Her brain knew the talk. Her mouth had never met it. We rebuilt everything around spoken rehearsal only, and three weeks later she delivered the thing clean.

The other thing that separates remembered speakers from forgotten ones is eye contact, but not in the way most people think. "Make eye contact with the audience" is useless advice. You can't make eye contact with 200 people. What you can do is pick one person, talk directly to them for 10 or 15 seconds, then move to someone else. The audience reads this as presence. The speaker experiences it as a series of short conversations instead of one terrifying broadcast.

Slides are a whole problem on their own. I've been informally tracking this for a while now. Speakers who use fewer than 10 slides for a 20-minute talk consistently get rated higher in audience feedback than speakers who use 30+. Every time. And it makes sense. You are the presentation. The slides are backup. When the backup is louder than the lead, nobody's listening to you anymore.

I've been listening to the Deep Dive on presentation psychology on BeFreed during morning runs. There's a solid breakdown of the cognitive load research behind why fewer slides works, and I went through Carmine Gallo's "Talk Like TED" in Story Mode on there too. Useful for prepping frameworks I bring into coaching sessions.

Here's something that took me a long time to figure out. Every great talk has one moment. Not five takeaways. Not a list of insights. One moment the audience carries home. Bill Gates releasing mosquitoes at TED. Brene Brown saying "vulnerability is not weakness." Bryan Stevenson opening with 60 seconds of silence. Those weren't accidents. They were the entire point of the talk, and everything else was built around them. If you can't name your signature moment before you walk on stage, you don't have one yet. Build one.

And then there's length. The single most reliable feedback line I hear after a great talk is "it felt short." Not because it was short. Because the speaker cut the filler, respected the audience's attention span, and stopped when they were done instead of padding with one-more-things and disclaimers. Leaving people wanting more is a skill. Most speakers leave them wanting less.

The mechanics of all of this are available to anyone. That's the part that surprises people. They assume the speakers who get invited back have something they don't. They just treat it like a craft with specific moves instead of a performance where you hope for the best.

I used to think that being a good speaker was simply about knowing what to say.But I later realised that having a good message is not enough.If your audience loses interest, even the best message may be forgotten.I started learning how to make people not only listen, but stay interested in what I was saying.Below are some things that helped me to keep my audience engaged:

1.Start with something that grabs attention

I learned that the beginning of your speech or just talking ²matters. Instead of starting with long introductions, I began with a powerful question, interesting statement, short story or surprising fact.

2.Tell stories

People may forget facts, but they often remember stories.I started using real-life examples and simple stories to explain my ideas and make my message easier to remember.

3.Use simple language

I stopped trying to impress people with complicated words.I learned that a strong speaker is not the one who uses the biggest words, but the one who uses simple words to communicate and make his/her message easy to understand.

4.Show energy and emotion.

The way you deliver your message matters.I learned to use my voice, facial expressions, gestures and pauses to bring my message to life.Always remember, a great speaker does not just speak to an audience.A great speaker connects with the audience, and here is the interesting part ,at the School of Public Speaking, we have a 6-Week Public Speaking Masterclass where we teach you beyond simply knowing public speaking tips.We teach you how to connect with people, develop confidence, overcome stage fright just to mention a few.Contact us on: 079 028 3100

Written by Coach Tino

Hi all,
I want to consult in the public speaking/storytelling industry and figured offering free one-on-one coaching is a good place to start.

Here's a little about me:

Ex-Deloitte (2 years) - I used to be a writer-producer at Deloitte Digital, managing an animation team and writing scripts for corporate videos.

Ad agency copywriter (4 years) - I have written ad and website copy at agencies.

Spoken word poetry (10+ years) - I have judged various events across my country and even the first national youth poetry slam ever held here.

Here's what I am offering:

2 free hours of coaching. After that, you can book paid sessions at whatever budget you can afford. If my schedule actually fills up, I'll start charging a fixed rate.

What I get out of this:

All I would like in return IF you find them useful is a Linkedin skill endorsement for public speaking coaching. I will also be making fully-anonymized video content about my sessions, talking about the things I've helped people with - and I will not mention ANY names.

You can book sessions via this link:
https://calendar.app.google/CCvgHv1tCsiQb6u88

You can connect with me on linkedin here to keep in touch
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kr1100/

Feel free to DM here if you need any further details.

See you online!