The third chapter of a Pocket Guide to Public Speaking is about anxiety in relations to public speaking; more specifically, identifying what causes anxiety, when does anxiety starts, and how to manage anxiety. This will serve as a summary of those areas. The authors identify three main causes of anxiety involving public speaking: lack of positive experience, feeling different, and being the center of attention. People who are new to public speaking or have had less than positive experiences tend to have anxiety because of these negative experiences. Feeling different can cause anxiety as well as speakers tend to think about their insecurities and believe the audience will react negatively to them. With all eyes on the speaker this
Communication apprehension has played a huge role on my life. Growing up I thought I was a social butterfly, not worrying about what people thought about me or how they viewed me. I had some great friends growing up that were always supportive of me. We would hang out all the time and meet new people and just have fun. It wasn’t until I was a little bit older that I learned of the fear of public speaking.
Public speaking is a must needed skill in today’s business environment that, much like any skill, requires discipline to master. Public speaking classes have many benefits, including gaining confidence through practice to advance professional goals (O'Hair, Stewart, & Rubenstein, 2015). Additionally, oral and written communication skills are the most highly sought after skills from organizations seeking to hire college graduates (O’Hair et al., 2015). The Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety (PRPSA) is a self-assessment consisting of 34 questions regarding communicating with others (CSU-Global, 2016). This paper will explore the results of my PRPSA self-assessment, analyze the results, and opine on how the results of the assessment may
Public speaking is the number one fear in the world, which shows that the number one fear is really a deep fear of rejection from the connection of others. The narrator in “Typical First Year Professor”, who had a fantastic education and experience, has public speaking issues. She explains how her fear physically affects her in, “Ten minutes before my first class, I run to the bathroom and vomit. I’m afraid of public speaking, which
I hope to control my anxiety while speaking in front of a group, since there might be a situation in my field that requires me to inform others of daily logs or protocols. It would be fulfilling to get others passionate about a subject that I favor and means a lot to me, as well as presentations are an expected process in future classes and need to be mastered.
One of my more vivid experiences of public speaking was when I was taking a class at a community college. While taking this class I would often have to give speeches and demonstrations in front of the class. As I was waiting for my turn to give my very first speech, I was very certain that I would have no problems at all, it would a piece of cake, or so I thought. All of a sudden, I hear my name being called as it was my turn to deliver a knockout performance, but as I stood in front of that small class of people I just blanked out. An overwhelming amount of anxiety came over of me. I could feel my heart beginning to race and my hands starting to sweat. I could not for the life of me remember what I was going supposed say. In addition, the
In the fourteenth chapter of A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking, the authors write about the property techniques to preparing introductions and conclusions. “A compelling introduction and conclusion, although not a substitute for a well-developed speech body, are nonetheless essential to its success.” (p. 110)
Doesn't matter who we are speaking with, doesn't matter when or where, the anxiety will exists. Thereby, public or private, significant or trivial communication with surroundings is problematic. Even conversation with your own parent or spouse can be difficult. Context based apprehension is a form of apprehension tied to a specific context(small groups, meetings, interpersonal, public speaking) is based on the idea that that people are sometimes more comfortable talking in one context and in anxious another (Myers A., & Anderson C., 2008). The audience-based apprehension corresponds with a certain categories of people that stimulate an anxiety response. This also can refers to a wide diversity of person types. Maybe interactions with police
When I have to speak in a small group setting or in public, I have anxiety in my legs and sometimes second guess my contributions to conversations. I fear that I will be perceived as uptight. Over the years I received various feedback of this sort, especially in informal settings. I manage my apprehension or fear by reminding myself that I prepared for the situation. For example, earlier in the year I applied for job at my company as the Technical Lead for the Cash Accounting System, a module of the Customer Information System (which handles printing customer bills). I prepared for the interview and advanced the second round. During the second round of interviews, I allowed fear to impact my approach. I recall apologizing for not knowing
Communication anxiety occurs to many people during public speeches or personal conversations, including me. I have experience communication anxiety when meeting new people for the first time, giving speeches for a course grade in front of my classmates, asking for help in study groups after a class section, or even praying before thanksgiving meal with my family. This occurs because I feel lonely and pressured during these events; I feel like I am expected to be perfect and sometimes I even feel that being perfect is not good enough. One strategy I took going into my first speech for my public speaking class, was to see how my other classmates would perform, and what kind of response they will get from their audience. This form of strategy is associated with one of the brands/form of communication anxiety, which is known as State-anxiety. State-anxiety- means that one fears of speaking publicly based on previous experiences of public humiliation during speeches or has experienced seeing someone humiliated when giving a public speech. In fact, I used or try using state-anxiety to my advantage because it allowed me to present my speech in a similar but different form, from them in such a way that I saw their mistakes and I try to capitalize on them. However, this strategy would have failed and probably led to me not presenting my speech, if my classmates experienced would’ve been so dysfunctional and humiliating
It is more frequent to have a genuine fear of standing and talking in front of a large group of fellow classmates than any other fear or phobia. When in realistic terms, it is more likely one will have to speak in front of students in a classroom than to be attacked by a shark on a Tuesday. Recently, schools have abandoned mandating speech classes, even though it would be easier to fund a speech class than a shark wrestling class. Public speaking does in fact create cases with reference to high anxiety and stress with percentages spanning from seventy-five percent in 2008 to eighty percent in 2015 for young people beginning at the age of fifteen. For adults, however, between the ages of 18 and 54 there is a 61.9 percent difference. Though most
They had a study with about 78 people that categorized into three groups; social phobia, shyness without social phobia, and not shy. The experimenters were given self-evaluations and were tested on their ability to give speeches. Through the study they found that shy clients without social phobia self-reported that they had the same amount of anxiety and fear before giving the speech. Even though the clients self-reported similar anxiety levels the clients without social phobias performed better while giving the speeches. They also self-reported of having the same amount of anxiety but less impairment during everyday life demands compared to clients with social
Communication apprehension is categorized as fear or anxiety associated with real or anticipated communication with a person or persons. It is a form of social anxiety that takes into account various contexts. The PRCA-24 assessment I completed scored my levels of communication apprehension in four different areas: group discussion, interpersonal conversation, meetings, and public speaking. From my results I found that I most likely experience communication apprehension during group discussions and interpersonal conversations but not during meetings and public speaking. I agree that the results do apply to my life on certain occasions.
Due to our high level of anxiety and low level of experience with public speaking, each group member relied heavily on referring to the power point during the presentation and therefore, our overall performance lacked improvisation and spontaneity. According to the social facilitation theory, this appears to be an example of a threat response. Specifically, group members viewed the task of public speaking as difficult, which induced feelings of anxiety, which ultimately hindered our ability to perform with a high level of competency (Forsyth, 2009, p.
In chapter one of The Art of Public Speaking , Lucas begins by talking about the power of public speaking he lists all the incredible people foreign and domestic who have spread there ideas and influences through the art of public speaking. Lucas uses a quote from the Greek leader Pericles ,”One who forms a judgement on any point but cannot explain” it clearly “ might as well never have thought at all on the subject” ( Lucas,2012,p.4) Lucas uses this point to clarify the fact that you have to know a lot about the subject you are speaking on to gain credibility. Later on in chapter one Lucas talks about developing confidence while speaking in front of a group of people . Lucas goes on to give statistics like public speaking is the number one fear for 40% of americans according to a 2001 Gallup Poll. After stating some statistics he begins to give some tips on how to gain confidence in public speaking. Lucas ends chapter one by discussing speaking in a multicultural world. America is the most diverse society on earth, therefore as cultural diversity increases speechmaking becomes more complex. the complexity comes from the differences in languages and meaning. Even basic messages are culturally based. Lucas is trying to convey that you have to be culturally aware when you are giving speeches to a large group of people. After reading chapter 1 of The Art of Public Speaking , I have came to the realization that preparing for a speech is more than doing research and planning out
One study of 202 undergraduate students asked participants (Ps) to complete a number of questionnaires before proceeding to a room to give an impromptu, 10-min speech in front of a video camera. Ps were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one group was reassured that their current situation makes many people uncomfortable but they should not worry since their speech was only for an experiment (reappraisal group), another group was told not to let any discomfort or fear they may have been feeling show during their speech (suppression group), and the third group was told not to try changing or controlling any of their feelings during their speech but to try and experience them fully (acceptance group). Following the Ps speech, they were asked to complete two questionnaires again to measure their anxiety levels. The study found that Ps in the suppression group reported significantly greater anxiety than the reappraisal group but no significant differences in anxiety between the suppression and acceptance groups or between the reappraisal and