Communication Apprehension Can Have a Negative Impact on

This is "Reducing Advice Anticipation", department 3.iii from the book Public Speaking: Practice and Ideals (v. 1.0). For details on it (including licensing), click hither.

This book is licensed under a Creative Commons past-nc-sa 3.0 license. See the license for more than details, but that basically means you can share this book equally long as y'all credit the writer (but see below), don't make money from it, and do get in available to anybody else under the same terms.

This content was attainable equally of December 29, 2012, and information technology was downloaded then by Andy Schmitz in an endeavor to preserve the availability of this book.

Normally, the author and publisher would be credited here. However, the publisher has asked for the customary Creative Commons attribution to the original publisher, authors, title, and book URI to exist removed. Additionally, per the publisher'south request, their proper noun has been removed in some passages. More than information is available on this project's attribution page.

For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for gratuitous, please run into the project's home page. Y'all can scan or download additional books there. To download a .zero file containing this book to use offline, simply click here.

Has this book helped you? Consider passing it on:

Creative Commons supports costless civilization from music to education. Their licenses helped make this volume bachelor to you lot.

DonorsChoose.org helps people similar you help teachers fund their classroom projects, from art supplies to books to calculators.

3.3 Reducing Communication Apprehension

Learning Objectives

Explicate steps for managing anxiety in the speech preparation procedure.
Identify constructive techniques for coping with feet during delivery.
Recognize the full general options bachelor for stress reduction and anxiety management.

Experiencing some nervousness about public speaking is normal. The energy created by this physiological response can be functional if you harness it every bit a resource for more effective public speaking. In this section, nosotros suggest a number of steps that you tin take to channel your stage fright into excitement and blitheness. We will begin with specific spoken language-related considerations and and then briefly examine some of the more full general anxiety management options available.

Speech-Related Considerations

Communication apprehension does not necessarily remain constant throughout all the stages of speech communication preparation and delivery. One group of researchers studied the ebb and menstruation of anxiety levels at four stages in the delivery of a speech. They compared indicators of physiological stress at different milestones in the procedure:

anticipation (the minute prior to starting the speech),
confrontation (the first minute of the spoken language),
adaptation (the last infinitesimal of the speech), and
release (the infinitesimal immediately post-obit the end of the voice communication).Witt, P. 50., Brownish, K. C., Roberts, J. B., Weisel, J., Sawyer, C., & Behnke, R. (2006, March). Somatic anxiety patterns before, during and afterwards giving a public speech. Southern Communication Journal, 71, 89.

These researchers found that anxiety typically peaked at the anticipatory stage. In other words, nosotros are likely to exist about anxious right before nosotros get up to speak. As we progress through our spoken language, our level of anxiety is probable to decline. Planning your spoken communication to comprise techniques for managing your nervousness at different times will help you decrease the overall level of stress yous experience. Nosotros also offer a number of suggestions for managing your reactions while you lot are delivering your speech.

Think Positively

As nosotros mentioned earlier, communication apprehension begins in the heed as a psychological response. This underscores the importance of a speaker's psychological attitude toward speaking. To gear up yourself mentally for a successful speaking feel, we recommend using a technique called cognitive restructuringA technique of deliberately replacing negative cognitions with positive ones. . Cognitive restructuring is simply irresolute how you lot label the physiological responses you lot will experience. Rather than thinking of public speaking as a dreaded obligation, make a conscious determination to consider information technology an exciting opportunity. The first audience member that you lot have to convince is yourself, by deliberately replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. If you say something to yourself often enough, y'all will gradually come to believe it.

We likewise propose practicing what communication scholars Metcalfe, Beebe, and Beebe call positive cocky-talkA habit of thinking in positive terms about your capabilities. rather than negative self-talkA habit of thinking in negative terms about your skills and abilities. .Metcalfe, Southward. (1994). Building a speech. New York, NY: The Harcourt Press; Beebe, Southward.A., & Beebe, S. J. (2000). Public speaking: An audition centered arroyo. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. If you find yourself thinking, "I'm going to forget everything when I go to the front end of the room," turn that negative message around to a positive i. Tell yourself, "I have notes to remind me what comes next, and the audience won't know if I don't cover everything in the order I planned." The thought is to dispute your negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones, fifty-fifty if you think you are "conning" yourself. By monitoring how y'all talk about yourself, you can unlearn old patterns and alter the means you think about things that produce feet.

Reducing Anxiety through Preparation

As we take said earlier in this chapter, doubt makes for greater anxiety. Nothing is more frightening than facing the unknown. Although no one tin can encounter into the time to come and predict everything that will happen during a speech, every speaker can and should gear up and then that the "unknowns" of the speech consequence are kept to a minimum. You can practice this by gaining as much knowledge as possible near whom you volition be addressing, what you will say, how you volition say it, and where the spoken language will take place.

Analyze Your Audience

The audience that we imagine in our minds is almost always more threatening than the reality of the people sitting in front of us. The more information you have about the characteristics of your audience, the more you lot volition exist able to craft an effective message. Since your stage fearfulness is likely to be at its highest in the beginning of your speech communication, information technology is helpful to open the speech with a technique to prompt an audition response. You might try posing a question, asking for a show of hands, or sharing a story that y'all know is relevant to your listeners' experience. When you see the audition responding to you by nodding, smiling, or answering questions, y'all will have directed the focus of attention from yourself to the audience. Such responses signal success; they are positively reinforcing, and thus reduce your nervousness.

Clearly Organize Your Ideas

Being prepared as a speaker means knowing the primary points of your message and then well that you can remember them even when you are feeling highly anxious, and the best way to learn those points is to create an outline for your spoken language. With a articulate outline to follow, you lot will notice it much easier to motility from one indicate to the adjacent without stumbling or getting lost.

A note of caution is in gild: you practise not desire to react to the stress of speaking by writing and memorizing a manuscript. Your audience will usually be able to tell that you wrote your speech out verbatim, and they will tune out very quickly. You are setting yourself upwardly for disaster if you endeavor to memorize a written text because the pressure of having to remember all those particulars will exist tremendous. Moreover, if you have a momentary memory lapse during a memorized speech, you may accept a lot of problem standing without starting over at the outset.

What you do want to prepare is a simple outline that reminds you of the progression of ideas in your speech. What is important is the order of your points, not the specifics of each sentence. It is perfectly fine if your speech communication varies in terms of specific language or examples each time you do it.

It may be a skilful thought to reinforce this organization through visual aids. When it comes to managing feet, visual aids accept the added do good of taking attending off the speaker.

Adjust Your Language to the Oral Mode

Some other reason not to write out your speech as a manuscript is that to speak effectively you want your linguistic communication to be adjusted to the oral, not the written, mode. You will find your speaking feet more manageable if you speak in the oral manner because it will aid you to feel similar you are having a conversation with friends rather than delivering a formal declaration.

Appropriate oral style is more concrete and vivid than written manner. Constructive speaking relies on verbs rather than nouns, and the language is less complex. Long sentences may work well for novelists such equally William Faulkner or James Joyce, where readers can get back and reread passages 2, iii, or fifty-fifty seven or eight times. Your listeners, though, cannot "rewind" y'all in order to catch ideas they miss the outset time through.

Don't be afraid to use personal pronouns freely, frequently saying "I" and "me"—or amend still, "us" and "we." Personal pronouns are much more effective in speaking than language constructions, such as the following "this author," because they aid you to build a connection with your audience. Some other oral technique is to build audience questions into your speech. Rhetorical questions, questions that do not crave a exact answer, invite the audience to participate with your fabric by thinking most the implications of the question and how it might be answered. If y'all are graphic and concrete in your language choice, your audience is more than likely to listen attentively. You will be able to see the audience listening, and this feedback will assist to reduce your anxiety.

Practice in Conditions Similar to Those You lot Will Face up When Speaking

It is not enough to practice your spoken communication silently in your head. To reduce anxiety and increase the likelihood of a successful performance, you lot need to do out loud in a state of affairs like to the i you will face when actually performing your speech. Practice delivering your speech out loud while standing on your anxiety. If you make a mistake, do not terminate to right it only proceed all the way through your speech; that is what you will have to do when you lot are in front of the audience.

If possible, do in the actual room where you lot will exist giving your speech. Not only will you have a better sense of what it will experience like to really speak, but yous may as well have the run a risk to exercise using presentation aids and potentially avoid distractions and glitches like incompatible computers, blown projector bulbs, or sunlight glaring in your eyes.

2 very useful tools for feet-reducing practice are a clock and a mirror. Use the clock to time your speech, existence aware that most novice speakers speak as well fast, non likewise slowly. By ensuring that you are within the time guidelines, you will eliminate the embarrassment of having to cut your remarks short because you've run out of time or of not having enough to say to fulfill the consignment. Use the mirror to gauge how well you are maintaining middle contact with your audience; it will allow yous to check that you are looking up from your notes. It will also help you build the addiction of using appropriate facial expressions to convey the emotions in your oral communication. While you might experience a little absurd practicing your spoken communication out loud in front of a mirror, the practice that you do before your speech can make you much less anxious when it comes fourth dimension to face the audience.

Spotter What You Swallow

A final tip about preparation is to spotter what you eat immediately earlier speaking. The butterflies in your stomach are likely to be more noticeable if you skip normal meals. While you should consume normally, you should avoid caffeinated drinks because they can brand your shaking hands worse. Carbohydrates operate as natural sedatives, so you may want to swallow carbohydrates to help slow downwards your metabolism and to avoid fried or very spicy foods that may upset your stomach. Especially if y'all are speaking in the morning, be sure to have breakfast. If yous haven't had anything to swallow or drink since dinner the night before, dizziness and light-headedness are very real possibilities.

Reducing Nervousness during Delivery

Anticipate the Reactions of Your Body

At that place are a number of steps you can take to counteract the negative physiological effects of stress on the body. Deep animateA relaxation technique that involves expanding the diaphragm to increase air flow. volition assistance to counteract the furnishings of backlog adrenaline. You lot tin place symbols in your notes, like "irksome downward" or ☺, that remind you to pause and breathe during points in your spoken language. Information technology is as well a expert idea to intermission a moment before you go started to set up an appropriate pace from the onset. Look at your audience and grin. It is a reflex for some of your audience members to smile back. Those smiles will reassure you lot that your audition members are friendly.

Physical motion helps to channel some of the backlog energy that your body produces in response to anxiety. If at all possible, move around the forepart of the room rather than remaining imprisoned behind the lectern or gripping information technology for love life (avoid pacing nervously from side to side, still). Motion closer to the audience and then end for a moment. If yous are agape that moving abroad from the lectern will reveal your shaking easily, apply note cards rather than a sheet of paper for your outline. Note cards do non quiver like paper, and they provide you with something to do with your easily.

Vocal warm-ups are besides important earlier speaking. Merely as athletes warm up earlier practice or competition and musicians warm up earlier playing, speakers demand to go their voices set to speak. Talking with others before your speech or quietly humming to yourself can get your vox set up for your presentation. You tin even sing or practice a bit of your spoken communication out loud while you're in the shower (merely don't wake the neighbors), where the warm, moist air is beneficial for your vocal mechanism. Gently yawning a few times is also an excellent way to stretch the central muscle groups involved in speaking.

Immediately before y'all speak, y'all can relax the muscles of your neck and shoulders, rolling your head gently from side to side. Let your arms to hang downward your sides and stretch out your shoulders. Isometric exercisesA form of exercise in which you lot systematically tense so relax sure muscle groups. that involve momentarily tensing and so relaxing specific muscle groups are an effective way to keep your muscles from condign stiff.

Focus on the Audience, Not on Yourself

During your speech, make a signal of establishing directly centre contact with your audience members. Past looking at individuals, you establish a series of one-to-one contacts similar to interpersonal advice. An audience becomes much less threatening when you call up of them not as an anonymous mass but as a collection of individuals.

A colleague one time shared his worst speaking experience when he reached the front of the room and forgot everything he was supposed to say. When I asked what he saw when he was in the front end of the room, he looked at me like I was crazy. He responded, "I didn't run into annihilation. All I remember is a mental image of me upwards at that place in the front of the room blowing information technology." Speaking anxiety becomes more than intense if you focus on yourself rather than concentrating on your audience and your fabric.

Maintain Your Humour

No matter how well we plan, unexpected things happen. That fact is what makes the public speaking situation so interesting. When the unexpected happens to you, do not let it rattle yous. At the stop of a course period tardily in the afternoon of a long day, a student raised her hand and asked me if I knew that I was wearing two different colored shoes, i black and one blue. I looked down and saw that she was right; my shoes did non match. I laughed at myself, complimented the student on her observational abilities and moved on with the important thing, the material I had to deliver.

Stress Management Techniques

Even when we employ positive thinking and are well prepared, some of the states however feel a great bargain of feet almost public speaking. When that is the case, information technology can exist more helpful to utilize stress management than to try to make the feet get away.

1 general technique for managing stress is positive visualizationUsing the imagination to control stress and create images of success. . Visualization is the process of seeing something in your mind's middle; essentially it is a form of self-hypnosis. Frequently used in sports preparation, positive visualization involves using the imagination to create images of relaxation or ultimate success. Essentially, y'all imagine in great particular the goal for which yous are striving, say, a rousing round of adulation after you give your spoken language. Yous mentally picture yourself standing at the forepart of the room, delivering your introduction, moving through the body of your spoken language, highlighting your presentation aids, and sharing a memorable decision. If you imagine a positive outcome, your trunk will respond to information technology as through it were real. Such mind-body techniques create the psychological grounds for the states to achieve the goals we take imagined. As we discussed before, communication apprehension has a psychological footing, so mind-trunk techniques such as visualization can be important to reducing feet. It's important to proceed in mind, though, that visualization does not mean you can skip practicing your voice communication out loud. Just as an athlete still needs to piece of work out and practice the sport, you need to practice your speech communication in order to achieve the positive results you visualize.

Systematic desensitizationA behavioral modification technique that reduces feet by gradually exposing the individual to the object or situation they fear while teaching them basic relaxation techniques. is a behavioral modification technique that helps individuals overcome anxiety disorders. People with phobias, or irrational fears, tend to avert the object of their fright. For example, people with a phobia of elevators avoid riding in elevators—and this just adds to their fear because they never "larn" that riding in elevators is normally perfectly safe. Systematic desensitization changes this avoidance pattern by gradually exposing the individual to the object of fear until it can be tolerated.

Starting time, the individual is trained in specific musculus relaxation techniques. Next, the individual learns to respond with witting relaxation fifty-fifty when confronted with the situation that previously caused them fear. James McCroskey used this technique to treat students who suffered from severe, trait-based communication apprehension.McCroskey, J. C. (1972). The implementation of a large-scale program of systematic desensitization for communication apprehension. The Voice communication Teacher, 21, 255–264. He found that "the technique was 80 to xc per centum effective" for the people who received the training.McCroskey, J. C. (2001). An introduction to rhetorical advice. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 57. If you're highly anxious about public speaking, you might brainstorm a program of systematic desensitization by watching someone else give a voice communication. Once you are able to do this without discomfort, you lot would then move to talking most giving a speech yourself, practicing, and, somewhen, delivering your voice communication.

The success of techniques such as these clearly indicates that increased exposure to public speaking reduces overall anxiety. Consequently, you lot should seek out opportunities to speak in public rather than avoid them. Equally the famous political orator William Jennings Bryan once noted, "The ability to speak effectively is an acquirement rather than a gift."Carnegie, D. (1955). Public speaking and influencing men in business organization. New York, NY: American Book Stratford Press, Inc.

Key Takeaways

At that place are many steps you can have during the voice communication preparation procedure to manage your communication anticipation, including thinking positively, analyzing your audition, clearly organizing your ideas, adapting your linguistic communication to the oral way, and practicing.
You can employ a diversity of techniques while you are speaking to reduce your apprehension, such equally anticipating your body's reactions, focusing on the audience, and maintaining your sense of humor.
Stress management techniques, including cognitive restructuring and systematic desensitization, can besides exist helpful.

Exercises

Go to http://www.hypknowsis.com and practice a few of the simple get-go visualization exercises presented there.
Make a plan for managing your feet earlier and during your spoken language that includes specific techniques yous want to attempt before your next public speaking consignment.

howardforgue.blogspot.com

Source: https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/public-speaking-practice-and-ethics/s06-03-reducing-communication-apprehe.html