Running Head: DROPPING THE MIC: TEACHING PUBLIC SPEAKING FOR COMFORT

AND SELF ESTEEM 1

Dropping the Mic: Teaching Public Speaking for Comfort and Self-Esteem
Leigh Fryling
Vancouver Island University
14/03/2015

DROPPING THE MIC

Introduction
Ms. Fryling, she said, with a deer in the headlights look in her eyes. I can't talk in
front of people, I'm too nervous. Please don't make me do this. Can't I just say my speech for you
at lunch time?
Oh boy,I thought, resisting the urge to put my head in my hands. Here we go already. I
looked at my pleading student, with that tearing sensation I always get in my stomach when I'm
about to say no. It was a difficult situation she was putting me in, this student in particular. I
knew that she had no problem performing in the Drama class that I teach the block after this
English class. She had good volume, and a spunky personality. Nothing that I was asking her to
do as part of our public speaking unit was beyond any of her capabilities. But the fear and
dismay that registered in her eyes when faced with a one minute speech in front of her peers was
bafflingly genuine. It's no different than performing in Drama class, and you're one of my
strongest improvisation students. Are you sure you can't do this?
It's not the same. In Drama I'm just messing around and nobody cares. I'm not good at
public speaking, I know you taught us some stuff but I don't know how to do public speaking
well and I know they all think I'm dumb and I'm too nervous.
Ah, the crux of the issue. I'm not good at public speaking. How many times had I heard
that in the last two weeks of this practicum? In my teaching experience? In my life? And a matter
of greater concern, how many times had I heard those very words from my colleagues, men and
women studying to step into a profession that is primarily comprised of public speaking?
Teaching is, even in our attempts to modernize the system, still a great deal of getting up in front
of a group of people and professing what we know. A basic integral skill of our profession is
public speaking. Yet here are my peers, my students, even my bosses and mentors confessing that

DROPPING THE MIC

they don't know how to do it well, and that they still suffer a great deal of discomfort, nerves and
fear any time they are asked to stand and deliver. Why is it that we have so little teaching
invested in so ubiquitous and in my purview necessary a communication skill?
Furthermore, how do I fix it? I'll admit to more than a little bit of a crusader personality,
and the lack of public speaking ability in our population at large has been a pet peeve of mine for
a long time. I feel strongly that everyone should be comfortable expressing their opinions to
anyone they come across, and to do so in a manner that is clear and communicative. I also feel
that the sense of social judgement that is experience by those with a great fear of public speaking
(or indeed any social engagement) is intellectually and culturally crippling, and feeds into the
social trend of isolation that is becoming more and more prevalent in young people today, my
generation very much included.
Well, I am, for all intents and purposes, a teacher. And my only present arena of recourse
is my classroom, discomfort and lack of self esteem is the problem, I have an opportunity to
experiment on how I might fix it. Time to form a research question and design an experiment.
Oh, one that can be performed on a daily basis, quantified in some manner, and takes no more
than ten minutes of class time to boot.
So my research question is this; does daily practice and application of public speaking
skills in a low pressure setting increase student skill and comfort with speaking to groups? Which
is of course a fancy way of saying Does it get less scary the more the student does it? So for
two weeks, in the grade 11 English classes, I planned on having them practice public speaking at
varying rates of intensity, on wildly different topics, and for different lengths of time every single
day, and record whether or not their skill level and comfort level increased. But, as my Science

DROPPING THE MIC

teacher father cautioned me, before you research, you should research. What do we already know
about public speaking?

Before You Research, Research

Fear of public speaking, or glossophobia, is a type of social anxiety disorder suffered by
nearly 75% of the population according to statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health,
divided equally given a 1% margin of error between women and men. In public polls, both
formal and informal, public speaking often ranks as the #1 fear, higher than death or spiders
(which I find hard to believe, have you seen the size of the spiders on Vancouver Island?). What
has people so frightened?
The best answer I've found comes from a Psychology today article. In the piece, Dr.
Glenn Croston asserts that for early man, belonging to a strong social group was the key to
survival, and any loss of status in the social group was to be feared. The greatest social threat
was ostracism; being thrown out on one's ear. An early version of the silent treatment if you will.
Ostracism appears to occur in all social animals that have been observed in nature, said Kip
Williams, a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue who has studied ostracism.To my
knowledge, in the animal kingdom, ostracism is not only a form of social death, it also results in
death. The animal is unable to protect itself against predators, cannot garner enough food, etc.,
and usually dies within a short period of time, said Williams.
This is in keeping with what I hear from friends and colleagues- the primary fear is
judgement from peers. Someone will laugh at me, I'll look like an idiot, No one will listen
to me, etc. The great fear of rejection. Fear that manifests itself as shortness of breath, elevated
pulse, shaking, dry mouth, and a racing heart; otherwise known as the fight-or-flight response, a
function of the autonomic nervous system.

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The autonomic nervous system is a function of the endocrine system, which controls our
internal organs and a number of our chemical responses, both hormonal and regulatory. From the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
When a threat is perceived, the sympathetic nerve fibres of the autonomic nervous
system are activated. This leads to the release of certain hormones from the endocrine system. In
physiological terms, a major action of these hormones is to initiate a rapid, generalized response.
This response may be triggered by a fall in blood pressure or by pain, physical injury, abrupt
emotional upset, or decreased blood glucose levels (hypoglycemia). The fight-or-flight response
is characterized by an increased heart rate (tachycardia), anxiety, increased perspiration, tremor,
and increased blood glucose concentrations (due to glycogenolysis, or breakdown of liver
glycogen). These actions occur in concert with other neural or hormonal responses to stress, such
as increases in corticotropin and cortisol secretion.
Phew! So now we have a linear path to follow; people generally fear public speaking
because they fear rejection/social failure (ostracism), that fear response manifests as fight-orflight, resulting in all the physical sensations that people report feeling as a result of public
speaking. If we follow the path back, everything starts with fear of failure and rejection. Which is
fantastic! Because as teachers, we have all sorts of strategies for helping students cope with this
fear. The strategy that I identify the most strongly with, and the one which I chose to apply
within the structure of this research project, was Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD for
short.
ZDP is "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through
problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky).

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This gives us a lens to view a student's capability for learning as a range; some tasks and skills
fall easily into the range of a student's abilities, while some are just beyond, or far beyond their
capabilities. If we ask students to engage in activities far beyond their present ability range, they
will give up or become frustrated. But if we ask them to engage in activities just barely beyond
their ability range, with guidance and the opportunity to work with peers, they are able to achieve
the activity and broaden their range.
What we ask of students, and often of ourselves and each other, is to do 'public speaking'
without having gone through any sort of scaffolded process of skill learning to be able to
accomplish the task successfully. Not unlike asking a person to be a professional basketball
player because you've seen them shoot a crumpled piece of paper into a garbage bin successfully.
Just because they look like they would be good at a task based on one assessment does not mean
they possess the requisite skill sets for more complicated tasks.
In short, to try and make a significant difference in each student's ability to engage with
public speaking, and to overcome the fear response, it was going to be very important to 1) take
the skill back to its most basic components and start there, 2) make the lessons a group effort
instead of individual, and 3) scaffold, scaffold, scaffold!

Hypothesis/Research Question

Does daily practice and application of public speaking skills in a low pressure setting
increase student skill and comfort with speaking to groups? I asked this question and performed
this research project because I wanted to see if I could create a series of exercises that would
make public speaking better, easier, and more enjoyable for students.

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Analysis And data collection occur through:

A pre-assessment survey determining the previous

knowledge students have of the subject, their experiences, and feelings

about public speaking.
Observation notes and student anecdotes through
anonymous student journals.
Post-research survey for students exploring their
knowledge, experience, and feeling toward speaking after the exercises.
A culminating task consisting of a 1-2 minute
speech on a rubric.

The subjects of the study and it's location are:

Two separate but parallel Grade 11 English cohorts, following identical
curriculum . They attend Queen Margarets School in Duncan, B.C., a prestigious
independent female boarding school. They are evenly divided racially between
anglo canadians , asians, and hispanics, with half of the class comprised of ELL
speakers.

Time Frame
This study took place over two weeks, beginning February 10th and ending
February 20th. I saw each class of students three times per week, for a total of six
class sessions.

Limitations

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The study was significantly limited by the amount of time I was able to dedicate
to implementing the strategies and assessing student improvement.

Action-Based Research Project Process/Methodology

First I need to make note that sometimes, the best laid plans of mice and men fall apart in
the classroom. A large part of my observation process was to be a daily observation sheet that I,
the dutiful teacher, would cleverly and unobtrusively fill out as the students were speaking,
looking for vocalization, body language, speaking strategies etc. Within the first two minutes of
starting the research process, I knew that I was going to have to throw the entire piece out. There
was simply no time for me to teach and observe simultaneously; hopefully a skill I will develop
as time passes and I develop those eyes in the back of my head that teachers get at a certain
point, but if I was going to make this successful, the observation piece had to go. So should you,
dear reader, attempt this process, I would advise you not to get too ambitious- there is a lot to do
here just in the teaching of the strategies. All data for this research was pulled from the student
responses.
To begin, the process of introducing public speaking was very scaffolded, and continued
that way for the entire two weeks. The first stage was the introduction of the student preinstruction survey, which you will find in Appendix A. This survey gave me a baseline on
student's current level of comfort with public speaking in different circumstances (large group,
small group, crowds, etc) and what concerns they had coming into this unit. At the end of the
unit, the students took a very similar survey (Appendix B), to assess how they felt differently
about public speaking from the beginning of the unit (if they felt differently at all). This was the
first layer of reporting that ultimately informed the research data.

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The second reporting layer, and the most valuable tool to come out of the research
project, was the anonymous student reporting in their individual journals. The trick here is that
the journals must be anonymous, to increase as much as possible the honesty of the student
responses. However, since this is my only running tool for ongoing assessment, I still need to be
able to track the student responses without knowing which student is reporting. I did this by
providing each student with a small journal; each journal had affixed to the front a playing card.
Students wrote down their playing card number, and that was their journal. I was unaware of
who had what journal, but I was able to track the progress of each 'card'. You can see an example
of this tracking in Appendix C.
To begin, we discussed as a class where the fear of public speaking comes from; this is
the autonomic nervous system that you read about in the previous section. Then I introduced
what our daily activities would be going forward. First, every day, without fail, the students
would practice public speaking in one of three ways, described in the next paragraph. Second,
they would learn one new public speaking strategy or practice an acquired one each day. Third,
students would report how they were feeling about public speaking based on what they had
practiced or learned that day.
The first way of speaking is the one line speech. This is a fantastic way to encourage even
the most frightened and shy to speak, because all they have to do is say one sentence. Even one
word is acceptable, as long as they are showing good public speaking posture (feet shoulder
width apart, shoulders back, chin up) and can be heard/understood. The second is the
Toastmaster's 30 second speech. The only rule is that you must speak for 30 seconds without
stopping. The topic does not matter, nor does it particularly matter what is said, as long as the
speaker continues for the entire time. This is to encourage consistent speaking and help eliminate

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the fear of speaking through practice over time. It also helps to eradicate stop-start speaking and
words such as 'um'. Third is open opinion speaking. There is no time limit for this kind of
speaking, but the speaker must address and defend their own opinion. Now the speaking is
scaffolded- the number of people the students speak to increases over the course of the project.
So on the first day, they are only speaking to a partner. On the second day groups of four, then up
to six, then eight, until the students are eventually speaking to the entire class. This helps ease
students into large group speaking by slowly increasing the audience level.
So a typical day in the middle of the project might look like the following. Students enter
the room and see a critical thinking question on the board having to do with the day's lesson,
along with the instruction to answer the question in their journals. They are then split into groups
of six, and asked to give a one line speech about the question to each other, making sure to watch
each other for good posture and body language. The class may then watch a TED talk about
some aspect of public speaking, learning both from the talk itself but also from observing the
speaker and what techniques they are using. Or, the class will, as a group, learn and practice one
new public speaking technique, such as breathing exercises, power stances, or how to signal
appropriately with body language. The rest of the lesson then continues as normal, with a final
one sentence speech to the class about the day's lesson as a ticket out the door. At some point in
the lesson, students must reflect in their anonymous journals on how they are feeling about
public speaking, and turn in the journals at the end of the day.
In an unfortunate turn of events, my sponsor teacher was very ill over the course of this
two week experiment, and only saw two classes- she was unable to offer me much other than
encouragement, and the insight that one student was suggested in her IEP to not engage in public
speaking due to anxiety issues. But what she observed of the research was positive, and said that

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more girls that she expected engaged in the activities and overall the class seemed braver and
more relaxed.
Progress is tracked by number of positive or learning based comments, vs negative
comments. Learning or positive comments are tallied, as well as negative comments, and
progress is tracked both across the 'playing card' and also the class as a whole. Teacher
observation is also important and valid data, and can be triangulated by an outside pair of eyes
such as an EA or in this case a sponsor teacher. But most importantly, speaking must happen in
some form or another every single day.

The Story of My Action-Based Research Project

Lets get the data out of the way first. The pie chart below reflects the 20 students that
were able to complete both the pre-project and post-project surveys. Green indicates students
who reported improvement in comfort and ability, purple indicates no change, and blue
represents students who ended the project less comfortable.

In this chart, we see the trend of positive and learning comments increasing over time as students
reported in their anonymous journals.

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So there are the numbers. But what the numbers represent was a group of young women,
most of whom spoke English as a second or third (or fourth!) language, and who are culturally
disinclined to speak publicly, groaning in dismay or gasping in horror as I admitted to them yes,
this unit would be dealing primarily with the very activity they dread.
The room was immediately a place of fear. And for me, that was perfect, because that fear
of public speaking is my personal windmill to tilt at. I believe with most fear that people
experience whats called 'the zipper in the monster suit' problem. We fear what we don't
understand and or comprehend. Like the monster in the scary movie, we are more frightened and
dismayed when we can't see it clearly. But the moment that we see the monster clearly, we can
identify where the 'zipper', or the reality of the situation, lies. If the monster we real, as we fear,
there would be no zipper up the back proving to us that all the monster is is a man in a costume.
So once we understand a fear, we can step back, acknowledge it, and become less afraid. My
approach followed suit (pun intended). I started by teaching about the autonomic nervous
system, its effects on the body, and that public speaking sets off this reaction in everyone, with
no exceptions. One of the students literally said You mean it's not just me? which made me
realize that I had neglected another big part of the public speaking fear, which is isolation.

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Thankfully the idea that everyone experiences the fight or flight response did a lot to eliminate
that particular fear response among the students. By further observing in themselves when they
experienced the physical response of the fight or flight response, and comparing and sharing
their experience with each other, students were able to even further connect that everyone
experiences the physical effects or the psychological response, eliminating further isolation
based fear.
We then moved into body language, how to interpret what they see in others and how to
trick their minds into a greater amount of confidence by assuming confident body language and
posture. This segued into two daily strategies: power stances, and speaking posture. Power
stances are physical postures that echo the victory position humans adopt when they experience
great success, with the feet shoulder width apart and arms extended into the air. Speaking posture
is feet shoulder width apart, arms not covering the torso, chin up and shoulders back. Each time
we spoke, we would do a power stance for 30 seconds, and make sure to assume speaking
posture before we spoke.
It got goofy, which for me was exactly what I needed to combat the environment of fear. I
went for every laugh I could get. I went over the top and overboard in a way that generally isnt
good for teaching, but in this one circumstance was my weapon against the atmosphere in the
room. My goofiness made it more ok to explore, experiment, act silly, and make mistakes. It had
to stop being so serious, so intimidating, so I did everything I could to make it fun and low
pressure to start, which worked. I tried to keep that feeling of low pressure fun throughout the
whole experience.
This entire project was also a trick of pushing the validity of personal thought and
opinion. Fact reporting is the most difficult form of public speaking, its where the most fear of

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being wrong or messing up comes in. It is much easier to engage with public speaking when
you are speaking your truth, sharing your own opinion, so all of the speaking tasks were set up to
only be expressions of a students personal opinion, albeit based on the work we were doing as a
class (a short story unit). Even telling the students that right and wrong answers simply didnt
exist in this exercise didnt set them at ease, it took several days of reinforcement before students
started to accept that they werent going to be judged for what they said. 30 second speeches
were invaluable for this; students were given an either or topic to defend (such as Tim Hortons
Vs. Starbucks) and they had to continue speaking their opinion for 30 seconds. The sillier the
topics, the better, since all judgement stopped and the spirit of fun took over. Suddenly it was ok
to say what you thought for a sustained period of time, because it was fun and funny.
Now, I need to acknowledge my personal bias. Im a noisy, in some ways rather
stereotypical midwestern American. I put a great deal of value on individual voice, strong
opinions and intense debate/discussion. Put me in a room that is at least half comprised of young
asian women, who are culturally much less inclined to exhibit any of those things. Some of them
have to fight the urge to put a hand in front of their mouths when they talk. So my job of
observing has already become more difficult because Im judging what I see from a very
different cultural and value place than they are reacting from. But, the good news is, Im very
familiar working with young women from these cultures, so Im prepared to acknowledge less of
what I might view as progress as a big step for them. The other balance to that bias is that the
data is almost entirely coming from their survey and journal responses, and not from specific
observations, so I am still getting a good idea of how they are doing.
As we progressed through the unit and the speeches began to be based on the text, the
talking stopped being silly but was still a little more comfortable than those first halting attempts.

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By the time we made it to the culminating task of the final speech, everyone had spoken at least
once to the class every day for three classes, even if it was just one line of their opinion. The fear
wasnt gone, by any means, but for most of them it was a great deal better. Students were even
excited about their speeches on the last day, and wanted to go first. My favourite anecdote is one
young lady, who identified herself as terrified in the first survey, was one of my first volunteers
to speak on the last day. What an enormous step, from terror into comfort. Of course, for some, it
still wasnt enough, and they requested to give me their speeches privately, but they still reported
that they felt a little better about speaking in general and were glad that someone had finally told
them how. After their last speech, they filled out a final survey indicating their new level of
comfort. And in a moment of this is why I want to be a teacher, I saw so many improvements
that it gave me solid hope for moving forward. Also one comment from a student that said Ms.
Fryling, dont leave!
I may have teared up a little.

Further Reflection and Continuing Questions

But its not enough, is it? So most of them are a little more comfortable, they know some
basic strategies, theyve learned a little psychology and biology. For me as an educator, thats not
enough. So much hinges in our lives on our ability to communicate, to connect, to convince, and
so much our life is verbal interaction, we cannot continue to neglect it in our curriculum. We
teach students so much about writing, but in their adult lives they will do little more than send emails, generally speaking. But they will talk every single day. They will go for job interviews,try
to make friends, look for a life partner, try to convince the officer not to give them the speeding
ticket. They will use their voices every day, so why arent we focusing on more than being
polite? Going forward, I want more time. I want to make sure in my future classrooms that

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speaking is a much larger and integrated part of the learning, and I want to discover with them
what else they can do to increase their skills. So my new questions are as follows;
Will this work with a younger group?
Can I start teaching this earlier? At what age can we
start building in strategies and skills?
How can those that didnt improve be reached?
Is it just fear? Is it cultural? To what degree does
social anxiety play a role and can it be addressed?
What effect does this have cross-curricular?
Are educators in other disciplines seeing a
difference in these students? What is the change?
How do we attack the base of the fear response?
Conclusion
As I find is often the case with students who struggle with the I cant- mentality, its
about fear. And fear takes a long time to defeat. Did I find out if my approach to the problem
worked? Yes, but not as much for the reason I thought it would; really it worked because we
spent a lot of time addressing the fear. What I truly took away from this project was not tools or
ideas about teaching or anything like that, what I really took away is that we (teachers) because
of the way the system is set up (ministry) create the environment of fear that stop students from
engaging in even basic life skills like public speaking. I think that we have a great deal to do with
the upswing in student anxiety, social anxiety, and the way that students suffer social isolation in
the classroom. We instill this fear of collaboration, which Dr. Ken Robinson very astutely points
out we call cheating in the classroom but collaboration everywhere else. We keep insisting
that students do their own work and reinforcing the idea that students need to be individuals to
what I consider an extreme degree in the classroom. No wonder theyre afraid to talk to each
other!

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They also still suffer that deep fear of the wrong answer. It should be easy for a student
to share their opinion and thoughts with a class, but that fear of being wrong shuts down
independent thought, even if the point is to share what you think, which cant really be right or
wrong. An opinion is independent of concepts of correct or incorrect, it should be a safe place to
share and explore. But students are so trained to view all questions as binary, right or wrong, that
questions seeking opinions or personal thoughts are treated almost like traps in the students
mind. No wonder they choose silence, rather than risk being told what they think is wrong.
So to conclude I addressed what I felt was a big problem in classrooms, only to sink
deeper into a larger, more pervasive and more insidious problem of fear, student independence
and autonomy, and the problem of right and wrong answers. I feel almost like a detective in a
film noir,trying to solve what I thought was a simple case only to be drawn deeper and deeper
into a web of darker and more sinister trouble. I question sometimes if the sort of ideal classroom
I want to build is even possible in the system. And I chuckle as in my head I hear the phrase from
the classic film, Forget it Jake. Its Chinatown.

References
Croston, G. (2012, Nov. 29). The Thing We Fear More Than Death. Retrieved March 26, 2015,

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http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-real-story-risk/201211/the-thing-we-fearmore-t han-death

Mcgregor, H. (2005). The Shame of Failure: Examining the Link Between Fear of Failure and
Shame. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31 (2), 218-231. Retrieved February 26,
2015 from
https://www.psych.rochester.edu/research/apav/publications/documents/2005_McGregor
Ell iot_Theshameoffailure.pdf

Morgan, N. (2011, March 3). Why We Fear Public Speaking and How to Overcome It. Forbes

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind In Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McLeod, S.A. (2010). Zone of Proximal Development. Retrieved from

http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html

Baker, Millie. Kingsley, Daniel. (2014). Authentic Public Speaking. Training Journal.

Liao, H. (2014). Examining the Role of Collaborative Learning in a Public Speaking Course.
College Teaching, 62(2), 47-54.

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Appendix A
Survey #1
In this area, I
have:

Name_________________
Very little/no
experience

Some
experience

Speaking to
large crowds
Speaking to
classes
Speaking to
small groups (7
or fewer)
Giving
presentations
Writing speeches
Expressing my
opinion to others
How do you feel about public speaking?

Lots of
experience

I feel
uncomfortable

I feel
comfortable

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What fears/concerns do you have about public speaking?

What do you like/dislike about public speaking?
What are your experiences as a speaker?
As a listener?
What would you like to learn about public speaking/what goals do you have, if any?
If there is anything else you would like to say, please feel free in the space below.

Appendix B
Survey #2
In this area, I am
now:

Name_________________
The same

More comfortable

Speaking to large
crowds
Speaking to classes
Speaking to small
groups (7 or fewer)
Giving presentations
Writing speeches
Expressing my
opinion to others

How do you feel about public speaking?

What fears/concerns do you have about public speaking?

Less comfortable

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What do you like/dislike about public speaking?

What did you learn about public speaking/what goals do you have, if any?

If there is anything else you would like to say, please feel free in the space below.
Appendix C

Date
feb 17th

Student
4 of hearts

Positive Comments

Negative Comments

since last week I still

like public speaking

Learning
Speak about
something youre
passionate about
relax beforehand
plant your feet

8 of clubs
6 of hearts

5 of hearts

5 of clubs

3 of clubs

Be honest, tell the

truth
good posture
(positive and open
body language)
nice loud voice
public speaking is
cool

plant your feet

open yourself up
no fidgeting
be into your topic
public speaking to
me is terrible, I dont
like people staring at
me, its like theyre
judging me

sense of humour
tell the truth
share personal
experience
tell the truth/be
honest
share personal
experience
sense of humor

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4 of clubs

2 of hearts

22

felt nervous, but

better than last time
because I had time to
think about what I
want to say

telling the truth be

honest
be humorous
share personal
experiences

public speaking is ok,

it depends, if Im
speaking with a group
Im not familiar with
then Ill be afraid, but
if im speaking to my
class then Im ok with
it

sense of humor
not afraid to tell
the truth
expresses
emotions
projection

joker

Feb 18th

public speaking is
awful

sense of humor
truthful
vulnerability
projection

6 of clubs

this week I felt better

about public speaking
because I learned the
reason why I was
scared. I think this
will help me the most
through public
speaking

planting feet
no ticks
projections

5 of diamonds

I feel a little bit better

but I still dont like it

being comfortable
eye contact
being honest

5 of clubs

more fun, pretty

good, less stress

be comfortable
be honest
eye contact

2 of spades

just so-so

standing to be
comfortable and
confident
follow your heart,
be honest
body language

2 of clubs

I did feel better about

public speaking, I
dont feel that
nervous anymore

be honest, posture,
eye contact

2 of clubs

-----------------------

------------------------

---------------

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4 of spades

really hard

5 of clubs

nervous
breathtaking
heartrate up

confidence,
posture, voice,
honesty

3 of clubs

feel a bit better

dont like doing it in

another language

6 of hearts

feel good about what

were learning

learning too fast,

time limit

would like more

personal learning

still dont like public

speaking

have some new

ideas

2 of spades
8 of clubs

--------------

------------------

-------------

4 of hearts

---------------

------------------

-------------

6 of clubs

public speaking has

become more
acceptable in my
brain because I know
everyone feels the
same way and they
dont judge me as
much as I think they
do

joker

Im feeling more
relaxed about it now

5 of hearts

public speaking is
cool

5 of clubs

--------------------

-----------------------

------------------

2 of hearts

If I know what to say,

I feel confident

7 of hearts

Still not the best but

better since I know all
the people I am
talking to

3 of clubs

confident somewhat
public speaking
seems less scary

7 of clubs

I AM VERY

DROPPING THE MIC

24

UNCOMFORTABL
E
8 of hearts

At this point I would

prefer to do it one on
one

4 of clubs

I strongly dislike
public speaking with
every fibre of my
body, I would do
almost anything to
avoid it.

8 of diamonds

I feel ok speaking to
this class because of
my friends

8 of spades

still really bad.

nervous

3 of diamonds

totally fine

3 of hearts

I am nervous for
tomorrow but more
confident than when
we started

7 of diamonds
6 of diamonds

public speaking are

normal