1. What makes you apprehensive about public speaking?

Public speaking is pretty much a self explanatory class. Public speaking is a class that helps you develop your speaking skills in general. What I have always apprehended about public speaking is how others view me. The only thing I’m uneasy about is how my audience would react to my speeches. I’ve always question if they would understand what my point is, and if they would enjoy my whole speech overall. Having the thought of standing up there and just speaking, without making any sense or having my thoughts organized enough, is what makes me concerned. Usually when I have a speech coming up, I would organize it into an outline, make sure I have my main points down, and practice my speech enough until I remember those main ideas that I will be discussing. When I get up to speak though, I have this tendency to speak fast in order to get my speech over with. Once I’m up there delivering my speech, I’m still a bit nervous, because I know that all eyes are on me. Everyone’s watching my every move and listening to every word- or at least I hope so. Because of that bad habit, I sometimes leave some points out that would have boosted my speech just a little bit more. Overall my thoughts about how the audience will judge me are what I’m apprehensive about, because it also ties in with my speech performance. Considering how this is an online course, we have never met each other at all. To know that we are going to meet up at the end of this month, and give a speech is something that I am slightly nervous about. The chapter talks about the process of habituation. I re-read this paragraph twice, because it stood out to me as to be very true. People do have to get used to the environment and the people around in order to feel more comfortable. I’m the same way, once I am comfortable with some people and I know how the classroom is facilitated, I can act more without hesitation. I won’t have to question everything that I do, because by being used to the rules of the class I am able to participate freely. Also, the book mentions about how presentation media is very helpful nowadays. The choice of using PowerPoint or to use any physical object helps me to calm down, because people are also focusing on the object and not just centering their eyes all on me.