This week’s Throwback Thursday are images of EC Montreal’s Student Academic Lecture Series. Our EC Montreal students always impress us with their stellar presentations! Students have a chance to deliver a presentation to the entire school on a subject they are most passionate about.
At EC Montreal, we strive to encourage our students to speak English or French with confidence. We teach presentation skills and develop our students’ public speaking through these lecture series. Public speaking is one of the most feared occasions for many. Studies have shown that many fears speaking in front of a crowd more than death. At EC Montreal, we strive to encourage our students to speak English or French with confidence. We teach presentation skills and develop our students’ public speaking through our student academic lecture series.
We ask our students to deliver a presentation to the rest of the school about a subject they are most passionate about. We ask their instructor to coach them and prepare them to deliver the presentation. It always amazes us to see our students stand up in front of an audience and speak to a crowd in their second or even their third language. Our students continue to impress us at how quickly they learn and are able to speak with great confidence!
We are starting a new year and will be developing our student academic lecture series even further. We thought it would be a great idea to give some helpful tips on public speaking. The most important lesson we can give you is to encourage you to be prepared. Don’t wing your presentations. Plan what you are going to say and use visuals to illustrate your topic. The visuals will keep the audience alert and will reinforce the message you are trying to deliver through your presentation. It is recommended to use cue cards to keep you on-track and focused.
Pay attention to your speech to ensure you are not speaking to fast or not using too much slang or words such as “um, ah or like”.
It is advised to make eye contact with the audience and to engage them in the conversation. Ask questions to the audience so they can feel like they are part of the presentation. This will ensure they are listening and engaged. We also advise that you take the time to smile and pause between sentences, so your thoughts come across as cool and collected.
The best advise we can give is for you to be yourself. If you try to be too funny or too serious, maintaining this act might affect your confidence as well as your credibility.
We hope these tips we have provided are helpful and we look forward to all our student presentations in 2021! You can do it!
