Public speaking : Merits and Demerits

 Public speaking is a presentation that's given live before an audience. Public speeches can cover a wide variety of different topics. The goal of the speech may be to educate, entertain, or influence the listeners.

Some benefits to speaking in public include:

Improves confidence 

Better research skills

Stronger deductive skills

Ability to advocate for causes

and more.

Speaking in public is especially important for businesses to market their offers. This allows them to get their message in front of potential customers. Sales people and executives are often expected to have good public speaking skills. 

Skills required for public speaking 

Language and Vocabulary:

To develop our speaking skills, we first need to know the right words. Vocabulary development begins when we are infants, as we learn to describe the world around us and communicate our needs.

Prepare Talking Points (Preparation)

Before you give a speech, prepare a series of talking points that contain the key messages you want your audience to know, feel, and understand by the time you have finished speaking.

Overcome the Fear of Speaking

Fear of public speaking is very real and can hold  back if one let it. If the speaker don't feel confident when giving speech, the listeners may pick up on that. This can make the presentation less effective. Fortunately, there are some techniques to help manage the fear of speaking in public. They also help you become more confident.

Know Your Audience

Before you give a presentation, take the time to understand your audience so that you can tailor your speech to them. Think about what is important to them and what they are most likely to find useful.

The type of event where you'll be speaking will also affect your approach. A formal gala, for example, may require a different type of presentation than a group of your fellow students in a classroom setting.

Add a Visual Aid

A visual aid, such as a PowerPoint presentation, can help you make your key points while better engaging the audience. Your visual aid should support your presentation but not distract from it.

Avoid text-heavy PowerPoints or reading verbatim from your slides. Create slides that feature graphs and images that reflect your points. If you need to include text, make it just a few short bullet points.

Practice 

One of the best ways to improve your public speaking skills is simply to practice. Through repetition, you can iron out your messaging and find better ways to phrase certain parts of your presentation. Once you have rehearsed your speech multiple times, you will naturally feel more comfortable giving it in front of an audience.

Pronunciation:

Understanding how to correctly pronounce words is another important element of speaking skills.

Merits 

Career advancement

Effective public speaking skills can help with career advancement, as they indicate creativity, critical thinking skills, leadership abilities, poise, and professionalism, qualities which are very valuable for the job market.

Boost confidence

Public speaking can significantly boost your confidence. Overcoming the fears and insecurities that accompany public speaking is empowering. Furthermore, connecting with audiences can be a strong reminder that you have valuable insights and opinions to share with the world.

Critical thinking

Public speaking is an excellent way to build critical thinking skills. Writing a speech requires a great deal of careful thought, from the audience analysis to the closing sentence. It's not enough to have a message, but also need to figure out how to tailor the message to fit the needs of the audience.

Personal development

Communication skills are crucial for personal and professional success and improving this area is one of the greatest benefits of public speaking. Preparing a speech forces speakers to take a step back and think critically about effective ways to communicate.

Relationship development 

Personal relationships, social interactions and work situations require you to communicate ideas to other people. Public speaking focuses on communicating ideas.

Be a better listener

Listening may be a lost art, but a public speaking course actually teaches  to become a better listener. Which also helps us to gather information and different ideas and opinions from different people. 

Demerits 

Chance of misunderstanding

Speech is one kind of oral deliberation. Therefore, it can create misunderstanding if the audience does not listen carefully and attentively.

Delivering irrelevant speech

Sometimes the speaker gives a lengthy and irrelevant speech to the audience. This creates the audience annoyed and reduces the importance of the main theme.

Reduce the importance of the message

While delivering the speech, sometimes the speaker gives more importance to his dress up and movement rather than on the information being communicated. In such situation, the importance of the message reduces.

Fear

Good public speaking requires eye contact, voice control, vocabulary recall under stress and in the moment and the ability to speak clearly and in specific about a subject while holding the interest of an audience. Such a degree of control may be difficult or impossible depending on the level of fear experienced by the individual.

Time Sink

The large amount of preparation needed to ready oneself for an effective speech can take time away from other projects or personal pursuits. Speakers need to not only create an outline, but to create props and visual aids.

A good presentation takes time to write and research; it also takes extensive time to practice, particularly as the speech should be practiced multiple times before the event