Public Speaking for Beginners: The Ultimate Guide

If you’d like to learn more about public speaking for beginners, you’re in the right place. Public speaking is one of the most important transferable skills as it can positively contribute to both your personal and professional growth. 

Public speaking offers people the techniques needed to communicate effectively, make a good impression, and connect with others. Plus, when done right, it can also be a huge confidence booster.

As a leading provider of Public Speaking Training Courses, our team at CoComms have collated everything you need to know about public speaking for beginners. Find out everything you need to know all in one place.

What is public speaking?

Public speaking can be defined as any situation where you need to relay information to an audience. Public speaking usually involves a message, or a key purpose behind the information you’re relaying (we’ll go into this in a bit more detail in just a moment!).

Many believe that public speaking is done in a formal setting, but you’ll be surprised to learn that public speaking can also be done casually. Both are just as important as the other.

The most common examples of public speaking include speeches, talks, and presentations, but you’ll learn from this guide that there are many more!

The four categories of public speaking

Like we just mentioned, public speaking usually serves a key purpose. This can be demonstrated in the four categories of public speaking. While these categories don’t cover every single type of speech ever given, most can be categorised into the four types below:

• Informative speaking: Sharing knowledge and facts with an audience. You’re informing them about something that they need or want to know.

Examples: Work meetings, educational talks, lectures, and medical seminars.

• Persuasive speaking: Influencing an audience’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions. You could be advocating for a cause, tempting someone to invest in your business idea, or convincing someone to change their perspective.

Examples: Debates with friends, political speeches, charity talks, and thesis defence presentations.

• Entertaining speaking: Also known as ceremonial speaking, this is where you aim to entertain an audience and evoke an emotional response.

Examples: Wedding speeches, award ceremonies, and graduations.

• Demonstrative speaking: Showing an audience how to do something, usually paired with hands-on and visual examples.

Examples:Live cooking shows, product demonstrations, and software training.

Where does public speaking occur?

Now that you know the basics of public speaking, where can you actually put what you’ve learned into practice? Public speaking happens every day across the world in a variety of contexts.

You’ll usually find that public speaking happens in:

• In physical locations: Classrooms, halls, auditoriums, meeting rooms, community centres, churches, and event venues.
  
• On digital platforms: Webinars, virtual conferences, live streams, podcasts, and video calls

Public speaking in these areas can also be either formal or informal:

• Formal settings: Business presentations, academic lectures, political speeches, courtroom arguments, and ceremonial talks.
  
• Informal settings: Team meetings, social meet-ups, networking events, and classroom discussions.

9 of the best public speaking tips for beginners

Now that you know everything there is to know about public speaking for beginners, it’s time for us to share the best tips and tricks for getting your message across with confidence.

If you’ve got a public speaking assignment coming up and you’re feeling anxious, check out our blog discussing ‘How to Overcome Public Speaking Anxiety in 7 Simple Steps’.

Get comfortable with feeling nervous

Nerves are good. You’ve probably heard it countless times, but nerves show that you care — and that can only be a good thing. 

It’s likely that you’ll always feel nervous before public speaking, so it’s worth getting comfortable with the feeling. The only thing that will reduce the anxiety is practising and preparing until public speaking becomes second nature to you.

Connect with your audience

When public speaking, it’s important to remember that you’re not doing it for you — you’re doing it for your audience. With this in mind, always take a moment to consider your audience and what they might like to hear from you. 

This can help guide the content of your talk or speech and ensure that the audience stays engaged throughout.

Organise what you’re trying to say

Preparing is an essential part of public speaking. Without preparation, the message or information you’re trying to present could be unstructured and challenging for the audience to follow.

Any speech, talk, lecture, or similar should have:

• A clear topic
  
• An introduction that introduces the basis of your speaking — what do you want to deliver, and why? Why is the information you’re conveying important? Why should your audience listen?
  
• Key sub-topic points
  
• A concise conclusion that drives home your messaging
  
• An offering to answer any questions or queries
  

Be open to feedback and respond to it

The only way to become an effective public speaker is to listen to feedback and act on it, whether it is good or bad. 

Being able to take on feedback and use it to your advantage is a key skill that will ultimately help you develop and grow into a well-rounded public speaker.

Show off your personality

One of the best parts about public speaking is being able to showcase your personality. Your personality is one of the only things that is yours and yours alone, so use it! 

Audiences find it easier to connect with someone ‘real’, and they’ll be more likely to take what you have to say seriously.

Make emotive language your best friend 

While emotive language may not fit into your informative or demonstrative speaking, it will definitely feel at home if you’re aiming to persuade or entertain. Using emotive language is an excellent way to grab the audience’s attention and evoke a connection.

Here are a few examples of how to use emotive language in public speaking:

• Jokes and humour
• Anecdotes
• Sensory descriptions
• Figurative language — metaphors and similes
• Rhetorical questions
• Personal stories
• Direct address — using ‘you’ and ‘we’

Become a pro at eye contact 

No public speaker has ever looked confident giving a speech while staring down at the floor. 

Learning how to maintain eye contact with your audience not only looks good, but with practice, it means you’ll rely less on a script or flash cards and more on your natural ability to tell a story or relay information.

A great way to practice eye contact with an audience is to divide them into sections. Direct your eyes towards one zone at a time, shifting between the zones every few sentences to make it look more natural.

Elevate what you’re saying with body language

What you’re saying is one thing, but how you say it is another. When you learn how to use your body language to your advantage, you’ll come across as more confident and trustworthy to your audience.

The best body language techniques for public speaking include:

• Standing tall
• Power posing (before you start your speech or talk)
• Using an open posture (not crossing your arms or hiding your hands)
• Emphasising points with your hands (like gesturing outwards when using direct address, or counting on your fingers)
• Maintaining consistent eye contact
• Smiling
• Breathing slowly (to ease nervousness)
  

Don’t rush

When public speaking, it’s important to remember that the stage is (sometimes, quite literally!) yours. You have time to speak as slowly as you need to make your point. 

However, nervousness can sometimes result in a rushed speech or talk, which can leave the audience feeling a bit flustered, confused about your point, and without any key takeaways.

Before public speaking, practice speaking out what you have to say as much as you can so you get a feel for how fast or slow you should deliver. A great way to practice this is by recording your speech or presentation and then listening to it to see if it sounds natural.

If you don’t want to rush what you have to say, try:

• Breathing in between your sentences
• Prioritising clarity over speed
• Adding pause points
• Seeing your talk, speech, or presentation as a two-way conversation
• Speaking after an exhale
• Getting used to silence — it may feel awkward to you, but it’s effective for the audience!

Enrol in a public speaking training course with CoComms

Our Public Speaking Training Course is designed to help beginners like you feel more confident in their public speaking abilities. 

From presentation training and stakeholder communication to how to speak during video calls, we leave no stone unturned.

Learn more about us, and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you require more information.