As I have never been one to feel any level of speech anxiety, I suppose that any apprehension that I have toward public speaking would be on a micro level. I do not wish to imply that I am a great public speaker with little room for improvement; rather that I am generally comfortable with public speaking but still have a lot of fine tuning to do in regards to the process.
The area in which I could use the most improvement would be organizationally. I am a pretty disorganized person generally. I never use a calendar or schedule and tend to just keep everything in my head and do things as they need to be done. This can lead to the unfortunate circumstance of something being forgotten and letting myself or others down. As this relates to public speaking I usually am better at speaking off the cuff and when it comes to a fully preplanned speech if I have not gone to the trouble of writing it out in its entirety and memorizing it verbatim I end up in a spot of trouble. I struggle with writing outlines and especially with filling out and reading off of note cards. This can lead to uncertainty about my ideas.
I also have noticed in the past that while I do not necessarily get nervous or feel anxiety I can get rattled when I make a mistake. This has applied at times to other forms of public performance, as well as public speaking. When I make a mistake I act as though the audience has a written copy of my speech and know exactly what I have said incorrectly or left out. I suppose this could be a form of the spotlight effect, as I am placing more emphasis on how closely everyone is watching me than they actually are. I will often retrace my steps and draw unnecessary attention to a mistake that would likely otherwise have gone completely unnoticed. This also could lead to internal noise for my audience as they become distracted thinking about why I reacted the way that I did.
I'm looking forward to the opportunity to work on the more technical aspects of speech writing and presentations, as well as to become more comfortable moving past the mistakes that I make.
I feel the same about myself. I don't think I get super nervous when speaking, but just enough to have the symptoms. If there's on thing I know I could use more of, its being more organized. I'm kinda lazy. There will be times when I have the opportunity to write something down, but instead I choose to just try and remember it. Most of the time that doesn't work out well, so I've gotten into the habit of writing things down. Also, whenever I forget a line or can't remember exactly how to say the sentence, I'll just improvise in my own way. Sometimes it helps keep the train of thought until I get to the next line I'm suppose to say.
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