SPECIAL: How To Do Well In Oral Presentation

I realized it would be nice of me (hehe) to share with my readers some useful tips for Oral Presentation. I am not going to inundate the whole page with a list of suggestions; instead, only key points will be shown here. All the information is gathered from the examiners' comments which was given back to the JC2s early this term.

1) Stress on key words
I noticed that examiners love it when students stress on key words. It is like a must-have for every good presentation. Let me give you two examples:
'Peter has played an instrumental role in establishing the company.'
'Not one or two were injured, but nearly a million civilians were affected.'
I do not have to teach you which words to stress on, do I?

2) Hand gestures
This is another important feature that you must incorporate into your speech to attain high scores. In fact, it would look great if you are able to combine the stress on key words with powerful and convincing hand gestures.
Take a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAz-grHMhTE

3) Maintain eye contact
One mistake students frequently make is that they only tend to maintain eye contact with examiners. Not good enough! Your eyeballs should sweep across the room and you must establish eye contact with the other candidates there.
Bonus tip: Establish a friendship with the other TPJCians there. You will less stressful during the actual day. You can start by exchanging smiles.

4) Don't refer to cue cards
Examiners do not seem to like students who love to refer to their cue cards while presenting their projects. As far as possible, memorize at least 99% of the speech. 3 suggestions on how you can do that are shown below:
- Read to your pet or stuff toys in your bedroom at least four times everyday.
- Play the don't forget the lyrics lines! game yourself. Repeat the whole rehearsal every time you forget a part of the speech, even if you were approaching the end of it.
- Get a license and make a speech in the Speakers' Corner at Hong Lim Park one day. You will have no choice but to memorize all the lines or suffer humiliation. (I am actually joking regarding this one. But you can try if you wish too. Haha.)

5) Don't repeat!!!!!!!!!!
Never ever and even think of repeating any points (excessively) if an examiner poses a question at you. In other words, do not over emphasize on certain issues. It gives an impression to the examiner that you do not really know about your chosen topic widely enough.

And don't forget to smile. Smiling helps to erase 'stage fright'.
One more month and Project Work is over.