DISCUSSION 1
ANSWER THIS QUESTIONS.
Two things that I find helpful are "practice, practice, practice" and "knowing your material."
Practicing a lot and knowing your material tend to go hand-in-hand. Through practice you will get a stronger grip on your material and that will in turn lead to knowing your material. The better you know your material, the more likely you are to deliver the presentation more effectively because you will not be worrying about what you are saying and can spend time simply saying it. From a comfortability standpoint, this is a terrific way to make sure that you are doing everything you can to make the presentation run smoothly and efficiently for the audience.
Going beyond the simple "practice, practice, practice" idea, you need to practice doing things the right way. It does not matter how much practice you do if you practice making mistakes. This will inevitably lead to you making similar mistakes in your presentation when you record or give it live. Practice the right way and be sure that when you make a mistake you go back, fix it, and then continue on. That will help you know where the problems are and what you need to be conscious of moving into the final presentation.
Can you think of a time when you practiced something and kept making a mistake that you did not correct? What happened when you gave the actual presentation?
ANSWER THIS LAST QUESTIONS.
Cultural differences are an important aspect to consider as you present your speech or PowerPoint presentation. Where some people (like many who live in the United States) think that eye contact is something that we do to prevent people from thinking that we are lying, other cultures may not assign the same meaning to this behavior.
An example of this is when I used to host weekly meetings for approximately 100 employees who worked at the Best Buy corporate service center outside of Cleveland, Ohio. From week to week, I was responsible for doing things like reviewing repair numbers, updating the employees on changes of policy and communications from managers, and general employee relations related material. Following a meeting on a particular Friday morning, one of my coworkers stopped me and said that in her culture (she like many of my coworkers were of Western European heritage) speakers who put their hands in their pockets at any point in a presentation were considered to be disrespectful. It was a non-verbal behavior that I did almost every week and I had no idea that I may be offending a portion of my audience. I thanked her for letting me know and tried my best to eliminate the behavior from my presentations.
Have any of you experienced similar situations? What is the best way to remedy these situations is they do occur, class?
DISCUSSION 2
ANSWER THIS QUESTIONS.
Impromptu speeches can be very difficult for people because they do not have the ability to really practice the material and gather exactly what they want to say. That being said, it can be very beneficial for creative people or people who adapt really well on the fly. If you are really good at conducting question and answer sessions, for instance, you will often also be good with impromptu delivery because you are able to process information relatively quickly and then provide some form of clarity in the words that you choose.
Many singers do use the impromptu delivery because they can shut down the "over thinking" part of their brains and just allow themselves to work. Can you think of other areas where impromptu delivery of presentations would be a benefit, class? What about areas where impromptu is a really bad idea for someone?