Practicing public speaking is the best way to get better and remove all your fears. However, often you will want to practice your public speaking without getting up in front of a crowd…even if that crowd is a small group of friends or family.
Practice public speaking in the privacy of your own home is a great thing to do and will make you more confident on the day. Just as professional musicians spend hundreds of hours practice their craft in the room, the more you practice your public speaking (even if it’s not in front of a crowd) the better you will become.
Listen To The Podcast “How To Practice Public Speaking”
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Watch The Video “How To Practice Public Speaking”
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The Best Way To Practice IS To Get Up In Front Of A Crowd, But It’s Not The Only Way
One of the best ways to get better at public speaking is to practice in front of a crowd and to actually do public speaking. Speak in front of people and get feedback to see how you feel, to see how you handle getting up on stage and all of that. But sometimes we want to practice speaking without getting up in front of people and without making a fool of ourselves.
Practice Tip #1: Write Down Your Speech On Paper
The first tip to practice public speaking at home is to write down your speech. Get a piece of paper and get a pen, or maybe use a computer. Use whatever writing device you use it doesn’t really matter, but get a writing device and write any speech word for word exactly what you want to say.
Write the introduction, the middle and the end. Write it exactly word for word and get the entire speech down on paper.
This is a really good step to get your thoughts into something more tangible and to really practice what a speech should sound like.
Practice Tip #2: Learn Your Speech Off By Heart
The second tip is to learn your speech off by heart. Once you’ve written it down start practicing by yourself so you know you can do it.
You can do it at home or you can do it in your office. Find somewhere that’s secluded, you can even go to the bathroom and practice it in there if you like.
Tip #3 Practice Your Speech Out Loud
Practice and learn how your speech goes, know it off by heart. Practice all the way from the introduction, through the body of you speech and then close it off.
Pretend like there are people there even though obviously there’s not going to be people. Use the inflections that you would use and throw some comedy and all those sorts of things.
Practice how you would say it on the day. Practicing public speaking out loud is important because when you write it down you think that everything you write is genius. “Look at that, that’s that’s pure gold” (is what you think) and then when you say it out loud it might just sound stupid.
So write it down first and then go and practice it out loud.
Tip #4 Practice Without Notes
The tip is to practice your speech in the shower, or in your car, or in the backyard or when out for a walk. Practice somewhere where you don’t have notes and somewhere where you can be standing up.
Rather than sitting at your desk and writing it out and things like that, learn it off by heart and then practice it somewhere where you don’t have notes and somewhere that you can use hand gestures and things like that.
Tip #5 Record Yourself
Knowing it off by heart can work, but hearing your own voice is an even better way to practice your public speaking without getting up in front of a crowd.
Listen back to yourself you can see what sounds cool, what makes sense, what you need to remove and what you need to change.
It’s really easy to record things now. You can record using your iPhone or mobile phone device, or you can even use the microphone which is built into most computers these days. Press play and record yourself and then listen to yourself playing back.
You might be going “ummm…” every two seconds and by knowing that you can prepare and say to yourself “okay well I need to change that”
By recording yourself you will realise that while some things sound good in your head, they might not always sound that great out loud.
Tip #6: Record Yourself On Video
Record yourself on video, which is probably the closest thing to speaking in front of a crowd without actually speaking in front of a crowd.
When giving a presentation, you need to be aware the way you look, the way you move and things that you do. So get a camera, you can just use a smart phone, your digital camera or your laptop to get started. It doesn’t have to be a million dollar project (look at the video of this post!)
Do it all in one take ad don’t stop and then edit the video. Get it so you can do all in one take and then go back and watch yourself.
You might have from according to you have gotten rid of the “umms” and “ahhs” and things like that but you might have this strange neck twitch or there might be something that you doing constantly that you were unaware of.
There you have the five tips on how to practice public speaking without getting up in front of a crowd. Don’t just read this blog post or watch my videos, take these tips and implement them in your own life. Get up in front of a camera (or in front of a tree) and start speaking.
Public speaking is like swimming. You can’t get better at swimming if you never get in the water and you can’t get better at public speaking if you never speak.