activity

Knowing your strongest communication styles will help you achieve success in your presentations, but how can you know your strengths as a presenter if you have never given a speech? Here is an activity that you can do with a small group of friends or classmates which will help you develop your communication skills for that time when you actually have to stand up in front of an engaged audience.

1. Get together a few friends or classmates to write a short speech (2-3 minutes) about a subject of their choice. Tell them to make it informative, entertaining, persuasive or sincere.

2. Set up a fake stage anywhere, your school, your house or in front of the Independance Monument. Try to make it feel official but also comfortable since this is just practice.

3. Practice the speech by your self a couple of times and come together to present your speeches.

4. After your speech is finished ask the audience to guess which type of speech you were giving and ask them how effective you were in entertaining, informing, inspiring or being sincere.

5. Once you have figured out which style works best for you continue to hone your public speaking skills and eventually you will be ready to give a speech in front of your classmates or even Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Communication is a crucial way of connecting with people and expressing your ideas, but the first step to being a strong communicator is knowing yourself. Communication is not just about talking or giving a speech, in today’s world: You must be able to connect with people through texts, emails, and on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

However, in this article we focus mainly on communication through presentations. We will focus on four styles of presenting; inspirational, entertaining, informative and sincere. Before you give a presentation, figure out how you want people to hear your message.

An inspirational speech demands an energetic speaker with excitement and a lot of strong gestures and hand movements. Only by having a lot of energy and enthusiasm can you inspire people to do something.

Although you many not think about public presentations as being fun and entertaining, presenting information in a light-hearted manner will allow your audience to learn about new information while enjoying themselves and maybe even having laugh. Even if your topic is fairly serious, it helps keep peoples attention to crack a joke every once in a while.

An Iinformative speech is filled with details and specific knowledge and is best suited for an audience who really cares about the subject you are speaking about. The presenter shares examples, data and information with the audience so that they can understand a concept, situation or plan.

A sincere or serious speech is usually used lay out a plan of action, react to a tragic event or announce important news. In these types of speeches one must speak in a careful, calm and cautious way. Jokes and grand gestures should be left out of a serious speech.

Leang Samnang, a marketing executive of RMA Cambodia, said, “my communication style is a combination of Informative and Entertaining. I think that giving audience as much information as possible is the most important element. When they have obtained the relevant information, they will catch up with my message and vision quicker. I believe that understanding always begin with a lot of details”. In terms of entertaining, he also added “I like entertaining people during my presentation. If they are enjoying themselves they will be much more likely to take interest in what I am saying.”

As a third-year student at Pannasastra University Phay Paullete uses an energetic and informative approach to public speaking. “I like grabbing listeners’ attention and interest with my movements. Moving around the stage also helps me generate ideas,” she said, adding that providing real-world examples of her point is key to audience understanding.

It is crucial to figure out your own communication style. Everyone can not be funny, energetic or brilliant but everyone can be a successful communicator. No one will understand you if you do not know yourself. To begin to work on your communication skills, try out our activity on this page.