Yashfeer, Fang Yong and me are in the same group, presenting on "Improving The Industry Skills of Mechanical Engineering Undergraduates". We have been working for months on this proposal, and during the presentation, I presented on "Ways to Improve The Industry Skills of Mechanical Engineering Undergraduates From The Internship Aspect".
Just a brief recall when I was presenting:
Yashfeer started the presentation first, he did an excellent job. During that time, I was stressing myself to focus on my fluency and pronunciation (which I am pretty bad in), trying to recall every word in every situation, hoping that my performance will be as good or even better than the multiple rehearsals I had the night before. Then, it was my turn. When I started, it was ok, or in other words, according to plan. But as soon as I move on to some of the slides, I suddenly started to choke on some of the words, having these unnatural pauses. And this is the first time after a few years that this feeling fear sparkled in my eyes. I never felt this uneasy and unnatural when presenting before, and this sparkle of fear suddenly cascades into a series of mistakes. And I realized I focused on the wrong direction.
I put in a more than normal effort in preparing this presentation. I was hoping for a breakthrough. I wrote out every word for my speech, and rehearsed for hours until I can close my eyes and still go on presenting while coordinating my slides with my speech. I got to focused in getting every word right and make sure the flow and pace is right, that I missed one really important point that affect my performance significantly: Just being myself.
For all of my previous presentations, I kept on telling myself that to just be myself, present as how I would like to present, present on what I would like to present, simply just connect with the audience, following and leading their chain of thoughts, so that they would understand the main points of the presentation. And the biggest mistake I did for this presentation, is to solely focus on each and every word of the speech, and ignore the connection and interaction between the audience and me.
And for next time, I will be experimenting on myself on how I will balance both of aspects (fluency and connection), perhaps by skipping the script writing and jump into rehearsal instead, and see what can I achieve.
Hi Lee Gang :)
ReplyDeleteYou have really put in a lot of effort in practicing for your oral presentation! I guess perhaps you were too pressurized by your own expectations so you couldn't present as well as you wanted to. But don't worry... as your audience that day, I could follow your presentation and I also understand it can be very unnerving presenting with people evaluating you at the same time. I am glad you managed to compose yourself later on =) Yup you're right! Focusing on being ourselves and what we wish to tell the audience will let the audience feel our sincerity. It is also a good way to be less self-conscious and divert our attention to the audience. Remember the audience will want you to do well too :) Yup you can experiment with different ways to practise; maybe you can write down the main points of what you want the audience to know before rehearsing so it will be more structured and organised. All the best for your presentations in future!
Hi Lee Gang,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the sharing.
I feel you are just a wee bit too hard on yourself. Indeed, nerves did get the better of you (I still remember your pointer shaking, ever so slightly) in the latter half of your presentation, but overall, you put up a pretty decent performance.
You hit the bull's eye when you talk about being yourself. Definitely we want to present to the audience a very genuine and sincere 'us' - that's what makes so many presentations successful; presenters being themselves and believing in what they want to share with the audience. I'm glad you acknowledge that point.
Back to your preparation, I feel that it is important that you had rehearsed until you could close your eyes and say exactly what you wanted to say. It is also important that you coordinated your slides with your speech, focusing on getting the flow, the pace and the words right. I definitely wouldn't say that these were the "the biggest mistakes" you made for this presentation - in fact, how could these very important practices be 'mistakes'?
Your pronunciation was fine in your presentation (except for the word ‘third’). If you are aware that pronunciation is an area of weakness, then I must commend you for a job well done (you might like to know that I had this written down in my notes when I was observing your presentation). You'd proven that you had put in effort, and that effort paid off.
The rehearsals apparently also helped in other ways. The modulation of your voice, the gestures (though I did highlight in my notes that your gestures looked rather ‘staged’ – you definitely need to loosen up more) all served to grab and sustain audience interest.
A note about your eye-contact: you did try to make eye-contact, but mostly it was fleeting. You were looking at the audience, but also ‘not looking’, if you know what I mean. It will be good to maintain eye-contact with specific members of the audience for 1-3 seconds in order to connect with them.
All in all, I would say you put up decent presentation, Lee Gang.
All the best for your future presentations as you experiment with what works best for you.