BOOK'S REVIEW
Today, English language is the important Language in the world. Some countries had used English as native language. Above factors, entail us to master English, especially speaking ability successfully; we can communicate with the peoples all over the world fluently. For Indonesia as an EFL (English Foreign Language) people to learn a new language is difficult, because to use English language correctly and appropriately is not easy. There are some skills that we should master it in English—Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Now, the reviewer will explain how to improve our speaking skill. The reviewer took some references to master it. There are A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking by Dan O’Hair, Haxnnah Rubenstein, Rob Stewart, Public Speaking Success in 20 minutes a Day, Public Speaking the Evolving Art by Stephanie j. corpsman and James lull, Effective Presentation Skills A Practical Guide To Better Speaking by Steve Mandel, and Successful Public Speaking by Arina Nikitina.
The book A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking by Dan O’Hair, Haxnnah Rubenstein, Rob Stewart give suggests improving our speaking skill. It is about getting started, development, and organizing. In the first chapter is about introduction or getting started. Introduction is how we start the speech, what the introduction that we us to take the audience’s attention. In the second chapter is about development of Public Speaking. In this chapter tells Public speaking is a process, an act and an art of making a speech before an audience. To be a brilliant public speaker, your goal should not be limited with informing your audience or expressing your thoughts publically, but to changing emotions, actions, and attitudes, and to leaving your listeners moved by the words and touched by their meaning. In this book, we learned to set our speech from the beginning until the end. This pocket guide offers the tools you need to create and deliver effective speeches. You will discover the basic building blocks of any good speech and acquire the skills to deliver presentations. That content similar with the book Public Speaking the Evolving Art by stephanie j. coopman and james lull and Successful Public Speaking by Arina Nikitina. Thus, in the book Successful Public Speaking there are have other content such Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking, Components of a Successful Speech, and Three P’s of a Successful Speech. In chapter Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking tells five practical ways to transforms public speaking fear into excitement: Deep breathing, Shifting focus outwards, Visualizing, Focusing on facts, not fears, Building your speech on clarity, not complexity. In chapter Components of a Successful Speech we should pay attention to story telling, body language, tone of voice, pause, and visual clues. In chapter Three P’s of a Successful Speech tells how we prepare speech before we do that, we should practice and practice to eclipsed nervous in front of many people and performance.
Thus, in the book Speaking the Evolving Art have other content such Researching Your Speech, Presenting Yourself and Your Ideas, and , Speaking Situation. In Developing and Researching Your Speech, there are some steps to do that, developing Your Purpose and Topic, Adapting to Your Audience, Researching Your Topic, Supporting Your Ideas, Organizing and Outlining Your Speech. In Presenting Yourself and Your Ideas; Using Language Effectively, Integrating Presentation Media, And Delivering Your Speech. While, in Speaking Situation; Informative Speaking, Persuasive Speaking, Understanding Argument. In both of that similar book, they are talk about how to learn to public speaking in front of audience, how we start, how we deliver the message, how we manage our speech and how to eclipsing the fair to speak in front of audiences.
The book public speaking success in 20 minutes a day is similar with above books. Thus in chapter 1-5, this book explain what should we prepare before speech such preparing to speak publicly, organizing and spicing up our speech and so on. In chapter 6-10 tells how we do that speech. How we give the introduction or gretting, how we deliver the message and how we set or manage that speech. While, in chapter 11-15 tells how we do that speech like tells something that truth, do not plagiarism, how we use eye contact with the audience, how our gesture and motion in front of audience and so on. In this book there are many good suggestion that can improve our speaking. It gives steps to speech from the begining of that speech until the end of our speech.
In the other book, Effective Presentation Skills a Practical Guide to Better Speaking and Successful Public Speaking give other way to improve our speaking ability. According to Effective Presentation Skills A Practical Guide To Better Speaking, we should pay attention to Assessing your skills, Planning your presentation, Slides and other visual aids, New technology for presentation, Preparing your presentation, Delivering your presentation with energy and composure. In every content there are give tips to do that speech. In Assessing your skills explain about how to evaluate ourselves before speaking in front of audiences. They give some questions which are about the preparation to appear. Then, there are some tips for reducing anxiety before presentation: organize, visualize, practice, breathe, focus on relaxing, release tension, move and make eye contact with the audience. Finally, make a review checklist dealing with anxiety when we had presentation. Does it work or not, and it can be treatise for our next presentation. In the second part is about Planning your presentation tells before we presentation, we should attention to our appearance first, and then we prepare atmosphere of audience and room. In presentation we must ask you why, not what. It means you should concern yourself with why you are giving a presentation to particular audience. There are eight steps to prepare your presentation: analyzing your audience, develop position-action-benefit, brainstorm main idea, state the subpoints, develop introductions and conclusions, formulate the main idea preview/review sentence, develop slides or other visual aids and develop handouts. In the third tells about how to prepare and use slides and other visual aids in our presentation. We can use computer projected slides or other media. In our slides it must have something interest like pictures, using color, interest titles, and we can get pay attention from audiences. In the next topic also have steps that very helpful for us.
Overall, those books are very helpful to improve your speaking ability. We know as an EFL (English Foreign Language) to speak the new language is difficult. We should learn how to speak well in front of many people. The reviewer took the way to improve speaking ability with public speaking. When we speak in front of audience we should able to deliver the idea. In public speaking many people do not pay attention with the introduction and the conclusion. The speaker should learn how to make the speech interest. In these books many steps and many suggestion that we can take to improve our confidence, our motivation and our spirit. Some of these books also give suggest before speech like select your material or topic, Map out an outline, Add humor and personality, Review your speech, Tie loose ends together and take a note. It will help to decrease your fair in front of audience. Here are some tips that will allow you to improve your performance: Relax before you get up to talk, Greet your audience with smile, Do not rush through your presentation, Make yourself be heard, Talk to people, not at them, Claim attention, Do not stick your hand on your pocket, Be flexible, Be your best self, Have fun.
