Five Communication Issues I have Experienced When Speaking in a Presentation

1. The main issue I face when delivering a presentation and which causes me the most grievances is the fact that my preparation is always adequate but my delivery turns out to be much worse than my practice runs. During my presentation, the sequence of ideas gets somewhat messed up, I start drawing blanks or I fumble on big words. However, the good thing is I do not stop when these happen; instead, I start improvising my own ideas into the content and recover back to the central topic.

2. An element of nervousness always plays a big role during my presentations. I get dehydrated and feel light headed. This hinders my ability to speak at my full capacity. My mind gets cluttered up by some kind of fear of public speaking, so my ability to process information and carry the discussion along suffers greatly. I have found that sipping from a bottle of water helps calm me down.

3. I have a moderate eastern accent when I speak. I have to put in extra efforts to speak clearly and to sound like a Canadian person. It is difficult enough in normal conversational settings, so one can imagine the strain I must undertake when it comes to speaking in front of a large group. Usually, I speak slowly to try to build up my confidence and reduce the accent.

4. I have a minor body gestures that could be distracting to some. If I have a piece of paper in my hands, unknowingly I would start to twist or crumble it. It does two things: it interferes with my speaking by adding noise and draws my audience’s attention to my hands instead of my discussion. Thus, it is a good idea to have nothing in my hands and have a dais to put all my scrap papers during the presentation.

5. Eye contact is an important aspect of delivering a presentation. I have a bad habit of focusing my eyes only on the instructor and kind of ignoring the rest of my audience. I do this to obtain immediate feedback on my performance from the instructor’s facial expression. It could be considered rude in some situations, so I should work on eliminating this bad habit. I think that will come from lots of practice and experience.