Santai: Effective Presentation Skills for students

EFFECTIVE communication and interpersonal skills are two main elements in increasing employment opportunities or to build up one's career in life. No matter what your job is, you will have to communicate with other people. Giving a speech is another way to relate to others, to convey your message or to present your opinion or finding. 

A good presentation needs some effort on the preparation part. This is in fact the most crucial factor for effective presentation. Without a proper preparation, a good content can be a waste as people might not be interested to listen anymore. Here are some important techniques that are essential before the presentation journey:

1. Be prepared


Being prepared here simply means do your homework on the topic given. Do the research, find all the materials needed, meet people involved and arrange the content accordingly. Spend more time on preparing a good impression on the introduction because this will catch the audience interest to remain seated until the end. After you had all the information, the practice part will come easy and of course this will increase your confidence in delivering the whole speech. 

2. Stay Relax 

Not many people escapes the `butterfly effect' in the speech presentation and this is normal. There is no real cure to it and this effect also brings a positive outcome, sometimes. The best remedy if you have one is to take a deep breath, a few times, be relax. Think that they are there to listen to you, not to make judgement and criticism. Take it as a learning process to be better the next time. 

3. Body gestures 
Once we are relax, we can think properly and the mind will start its engine to demonstrate the content through the body language. Of course you also need to practise on some part of the body gestures, especially on the face expression, hand movement and body gestures. These are the hidden tools in getting the message across the room. 

4. Practise and practise 

Start practicing and rehearsing a few times before the real day. One of the most effective techniques is to visualize yourself giving the speech, imagine the real you and all the gestures you make. The visualization will create a positive response to the mind and it will turn out easier than you expected. 

There goes come useful techniques for you to try on. There are a lot other techniques you can choose from for your preference. The given method above are some of the basic ones for you to try. Now, you can get your pen and paper ready, your laptop on your side and start the planning process. 


Source: By Uzaimah A Nizam