Body language in Public Speaking

Imagine you are asked to address a large group of audience on a podium. What people will observe is not just your presentation but your physical appearance like face expressions, eye contacts with audience, hand gestures etc. In public speaking, body language is as important as your content or your speech. A good and experienced speaker use a variety of non-verbal communication methods  and can make boring content interested, simply by way of presenting and addressing to audience group. It is very important that this essential part of public speaking needs to be practiced and followed by every speaker, be it school going kids or business professionals or politicians, artists and public figures.

Importance of body language in Public speaking

Speaker who is going to present to an audience need to understand, why and how body language can make your presentation a success or a failure. A good orator with positive body language can make speech interesting for audience, even if content is not the best speech. In this article, we will see some important body language tips for public speaking for speakers.

Physical appearance

The first thing audience note in your presentation or speech is your physical appearance like what you are wearing, are you properly dressed for the occasion or not. If you are dressed in a casual shorts for the important business presentation, your audience may give it a miss, as this reflect your insincerity. For any public speaking, make sure that you are wearing proper attire, as required by the occasion.

Body Posture

The second thing audience will note is your body posture. Are you standing firmly on stage or are casually leaning against dais. Are you showing sign of nervousness like biting your nails? Body posture is an important part of public speaking, as it shows how serious and prepared speaker is.

Eye Contact

A lot many speakers do not make eye contact with their audience. They keep on reading their script or just keep looking in random directions. In public speaking, eye contact is an important part of engaging with your audience, and makes them connected with you. An eye contact increases credibility among listeners, and good speakers always keep an eye contact with their listener. If in case you are presenting to a large audience set , make sure that you maintain eye contacts with some 5-10 people.

Facial Expressions

Do you express your emotions, while doing public speaking? Does your audience feel expressions of joy, sorrow, happiness, and other emotions if you are speaking? Expressing yourself with a smile can make your audience more comfortable and amiable. Facial expressions are complementary to a good speech. Just like an artist is poor artist if his/her expressions are poorly framed or are missing, same is case in public speaking. As a good speaker, you need to make sure that you are complementing you speech with required paused, questions, expressions etc.

Head movement

If you are speaking to an audience, your head movement is also noticeable easily. If you are just looking into speech all the time, it will send a bad message to your audience. This also means that you are not ready to face the audience. If your focus is towards only 1-2 persons during speech, it also means that you are not giving attention to all people. Make sure that you are giving proper attention to most of the people in audience.

Hand Gesture

In public speaking, hand gesture is an important part of body movement. Hand gesture can be used to explain things during speech, and also in addressing audience group. A rigid body position, with no hand movement, sends a bad signal to your audience. Using hand gesture also give you more control of the stage and help feel you more comfortable.

Breathing and pausing

A good speaker know when to speak, when to pause, when to speed up, when to slow down. Your breathing control will provide you required control to your presentation speed and controlling audience in public speaking. Slow breathing and tactical pauses in the speech will help in emphasizing the right points.

Conclusion

In this article on body language in public speaking, we have seen how simple body movement plays an important role in success of presentation. People who are looking to practice public speaking for children and adults, can follow above mentioned points and present good remarkable presentations. Whether you or your child wants to participate in storytelling, debates, elocutions or a model United Nations or business presentations – using the right body language can do better for sure.

You may be interested in

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