Eight Ways to Develop Public Speaking Skills in Children

Introduction

Public speaking is the process of delivering a speech to a group of people in order to influence, inform or entertain them. This activity trains students to speak with confidence in public. But, there are many students who do not want to stand in front of a crowd because they are afraid of speaking in public. They feel nervous, have low confidence, have poor self-esteem, and are scared of facing the audience. For them, it is important to realize that public speaking skills can go a long way in boosting their self-confidence and ensuring career success. 

Thus, to help your children have better public speaking abilities, here we provide you with the eight ways to develop their public speaking and presentation skills.

Ways to Develop Public Speaking Skills

Join or Create Public Speaking Group

To encourage good public speaking skills, create a group of children of the same age group to sharpen their speaking skills because every speaker needs an audience. Make your kids practice speaking and listen to the feedback given by fellow participants and their parents. This exercise will make your child feel confident in front of a crowd. Social Groups play an essential role in providing feedback and support; thus, joining those groups will help your child conquer public speaking fear.

Begin with Writing and Do Not Worry About Grammatical Errors

One of the essential aspects of public speaking skills is understanding that words and language are just a means to convey your thoughts; thus, it is more important to organize one’s thoughts and formulate strong arguments. If the thoughts are organized, then it automatically boosts confidence and fluency. During communication, you must focus on the content instead of paying attention to the grammatical errors. 

Focus More on your Topic

Most people focus more on how people will think about them, rather than focusing on the speech topic, thus, making your delivery poor. It can also divert the audience’s minds to your anxiety rather than what you are saying. Thus, encourage your child to focus more on the topic and be passionate about conveying how it will help our audience to get what they want.  When your mind is completely focused on giving your audience value, your anxiety will disappear, and your child will feel more confident after knowing that he helps their audience get what they need.

Change the Mood Beforehand

To lower your child’s anxiety before giving their speech, do something that will put your child’s mood in a more positive and happy state; you can do one of the following things to make your child feel good instantly.

1. Do deep breathing.
2. Do light meditation
3. Think of the ways that your audience will benefit from the speech.
4. Do light exercise before getting ready for your speech. 

Thus, making your child’s mood light will make them feel enthusiastic, and they can put their point across efficiently.

Make Eye Contact

Great public speaking skills require good eye contact that makes people feel special because it seems that you are speaking just to them. Instead of asking children to sweep from side to side, ask them to make eye contact randomly as it will look natural. If it is difficult to look at everyone individually, then mentally divide the audience into smaller groups. Hence, when they look at one person in a group, everyone in that group will feel like they are looking at them.

Prepare Notes

Don’t force your child to memorize their speech; instead, Jot down the main points on index cards that can be helpful when your child begins to walk away from the main objectives of their presentation. However, motivate your child to practice enough public speaking skills so that they don’t find themselves reading their entire script from the paper, sending the signal that they are unprepared.

Encourage Reading Books

Books are truly man’s best friends and a great way of increasing communication and public speaking skills in children. Also, Reading is an excellent tool for enhancing speaking skills to a great extent. Therefore, you must encourage your child to read books to improve their communication skills and be a great public speaker in their near future. 

Know your Audience

One of the important ways of public speaking skills for students is to find out who their listeners are and what their motives behind attending this presentation are, or what they are expecting from your speech.  Once you know this, then it will become easier for you to deliver your speech with maximum effectiveness. After knowing your audience, your anxiety level will get lower, and you can deliver your speech with great confidence in front of them. 

Benefits of public speaking for kids

1. The human brain becomes very active when you are speaking to a group. The more the number of people listening to you, the more are the neurons firing across your brain!

2. Public speaking boosts your confidence. It helps kids learn to stay calm even during tense situations.

3. It improves their memory power, as they have to remember and relate to what others want to know, with just a glance of their eyes.

4. Public speaking develops the ability in kids to be persuasive and logical with arguments. It helps them learn to think on their feet and stand up for their point of view when faced with opposition.

5. The more they speak before a course of people, the more they learn to manage their fears and anxieties.

6. They learn to research thoroughly before a presentation, collect reliable information and seek help from others if stuck in some quandary.

So parents! Encourage your children to speak in public often. With the advent of social media where content is king, their skills will definitely help them.

Conclusion

Thus, Speaking in public is one of the greatest fears for many people as it brings on great anxiety and lowers your confidence.  Therefore, you must encourage your child to practice their public speaking skills ahead of their time. By putting effort into helping your child will encourage your child to become an effective public speaker. It will also help them in becoming more confident and self-reliant.

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