In the last two weeks we have attended to two
training sessions about coping with stage fright and speaking in public and I
can say that these two training sessions that we have had were and will be
something rewarding that will help us not only in the teaching field but in our
lives.
I would like to start by mentioning that I tend
to get a little bit nervous when talking in public and before I took this
training I did not know how to control my nerves at the moment of being the
point of care among a considerable number of people; Moreover, I only knew that
there are some exercises that we can apply before being in the point of care
but I did not use any of them at all. Also, I would like to point out that in
order to control my nerves at the time of talking in public I tend to walk a
lot; as a result, I may be a distraction for my public and people can easily
loose care on me; Also my voice tends to get kind of shaky.
Being afraid of talking in public can be
something normal and I think that everybody may have had an experience in which
they could not control their nerves. It is until you get to know the different
exercises and techniques that you can apply in the scenario, when you start
stopping those feelings and nerves that are stopping you from making a good
presentation. Furthermore, the trainer showed us some exercises in which our
nerves and feelings were exposed by being in the point of care presenting a
story; thus, I shared a little story about a ball in which I had to practically
perform the character of the ball when I was telling the story at the same
time; moreover, the trainer was able to notice my weakness points at the time
of talking in public and I realized that I tend to move a lot but in the same
space and my voice projection was not as effective as it should have been.
Then, in the second training session I did the same exercise again but this
time with a different story and I was able to notice that I improved because my
voice projection was perfectly fine but I kept making the same mistake when
walking in the scenario which is basically moving in the same space. Also, we
performed some other activities like the one we did with a balloon in which we
were pretending that the balloon was our life, so we were taking care of the
balloon and we started carrying in it with only one finger which was very difficult;
then, we did it with two fingers and so on until we did it with the whole hand
and of course that the more fingers we were using the most easy it was; thus,
with this exercise we assume that the balloon was our life and that it is very
difficult to keep our life in a steady point. Also, we performed another
activity to improve our concentration and it was to play “mica” (a common
Salvadoran game) in order to say the name of one of the classmates that was in
the classroom but that name should not have been used before, al off these was
done by touching somebody else’s.
To finish, I would like to infer that with this
course I was able to notice all the mistakes that I make when talking in
public, also I learned from my classmates’ mistakes as well. Although this
course was very funny, we learned a lot from the trainer and from ourselves.
Talking in public is something challenging but with the right guide we can
control the situation.
Here you have some pictures of what we have been doing. Enjoy!
