Lesson 8
Public Speech
Lesson 9
Freelance
Believe it or not, public speaking can be fun!
The key is being prepared and confident in yourself
and your material. Here are just a few tips that will
help you relax and have fun the next time you speak
publicly - because you’ll know you’re prepared.
1. Know your subject inside and out. Spend time
researching and writing a stellar speech that you know
will knock their socks off! Then, go over and over that
speech until you’re intimately familiar with it. Your
comfort with your words will show.
2. Take your time. Don’t read your speech word
for word. Instead, try to speak like you’re having a
conversation with your audience. Better yet, speak as
if you’re having a conversation with a group o f friends.
3. Don’t stand there like a mannequin! And don’t
clutch the sides of the lectern until your knuckles are
white.
Be natural and animated, using hand gestures
and facial expressions.
4. Make eye contact with the audience. You want
to connect with them, get them nodding their heads in
agreement. Make them pay attention to you.
5. Remember that your audience wants to hear
your message. They want you to do well. So relax and
give them what they want.
6. Vary your voice pitch and speed during your
speech so you don’t sound monotone. Know when to
rev up the excitement and when to slow down and
bring them in to your point.
There is one final tip I want to share with you
that will not only tremendously improve the quality
of your
public speaking skills, it will also help you
accomplish each o f the first six tips with ease.
Improving your vocabulary.
That’s right! Having a greater reservoir o f words
at your disposal will help you to both prepare and
deliver your speech with confidence. You won’t need
to read the speech word for word because you’ll know
a multitude of ways to convey your precise point.
Knowing this will help you to relax, connect with your
audience and deliver an entertaining and persuasive
speech.
You are going to listen to a freelance educator
Interview with a freelance educator
Interviewer: I wanted to ask some questions. What
is your life evidenced definition to the word freelance?
L. Kirkham: First o f all, it means working free for
yourself, not for someone else. That is an advantage.
Because, you can decide what you do, when you do
it, and where you do it.
Only at the end, there are
disadvantages if you rely on freelance work for all
your income. Sometimes the work might be scarce.
Interviewer: A ha, Is it a profession or a title?
L. Kirkham: Good question, not really, you can say
freelance or you can say self-employed, it is really the
way you choose the work you do, whether you work
for a company or an institution or whether you work
for yourself. Moreover, freelance is general term. It is
selling skills that you have: accumulated skills and
experience in the certain field.
Interviewer:
a ha,
How long have you been
freelancing?
L. Kirkham: More than a 6.5 years.
Interviewer:
What are the requirements of
freelancing then?
L. Kirkham: Basically, a freelance sells his or her
skills so you have to make sure that your skills are
up-to-date and relevant. My skills have been built up
almost 40 years o f teaching in education, but I still
need to keep it up-to-date.
Interviewer:
So, what are the priorities and
advantages of freelancing?
L. Kirkham: It keeps me interested in the field.
There is a lot of travel that is an advantage to meet
new people.
Interviewer: yes right u r What challenging points
or disadvantages o f freelancing can you state?
L. Kirkham: The one
is staying away a lot being
apart from my family.
Interviewer:
Does freelancing require higher
education or in other words diploma?
L. Kirkham: In the field of ELT freelancing requires
higher education, not because it is in the official
requirement, because you need some background to be
effective in the area. That is the high level background
is really needed in order to make people believe.
Interviewer:
Does freelancing exist for both
governmental and non-governmental organizations?
L. Kirkham: You can deal with some organizations,
you can get registered with British Council, various
Publisher Houses, if any availably they can contact
you. Publishers have a short term contract for running
the train and book selling. A part of that contact will
be for the training conduction. As for me I have had
both employee freelance.
I have been employed by
M inistries and private organizations.
Interviewer: a ha wonderful. And the last question.
W hat are the approximate salary rates?
L. Kirkham: It tends to be much higher than
the permanent employers get, the reason is that it is
usually short term contract, may be for two weeks. In
fact, it ranges between 100 GBP-1000GBP per day.
REVIEW 3
You atre going to listen to five people talking about
the difficulties they faced when they gave up full-time
jobs to become freelance consultants
Speaker 1. Being a freelance consultant I’d say
the advantages certainly outweigh the disadvantages
but little things can make life difficult at first. For
example, having to manage my own diary for the first
time in 25 years came as something o f a shock. I
went through about 15 erasers in the first six months
and I double-booked myself for meetings on at least a
couple of occasions.
Speaker 2.People think what you’ll miss is the
routine o f having an office to go to every day but that
actually gave me a great sense of freedom. What I
found tough at the beginning
was choosing which
projects to reject and which ones looked the most
promising in terms o f financial reward and future
offers of work. If you’re not careful, you can end up
saying yes to everything that comes your way.
Speaker 3. I think because of the technology
available nowadays you don’t feel isolated from
other professionals in your field; there are plenty of
electronic substitutes for being in an office. But what
you don’t have is the opportunity
to chat to people
from other departments, with expertise in other areas.
I really missed that and hadn’t realised how much I
had depended on being able to check out other people’s
opinions before taking an idea forward.
Speaker 4. I think the hardest thing for me was
the change I had to make in my mind. I went from
having a senior position in a large corporation with
all that comes with that; the car, a generous expense
account, etc, as well as the respect of colleagues, to
being a nobody. People didn’t automatically take my
calls any more.
Speaker 5. I found it very challenging to adjust
to the fact that there wasn’t
anyone to call when my
computer broke down. It’s very frustrating having to
sort out these things on your own. It takes so much
time. But other than that, I’d recommend the life of
a consultant to any of my former colleagues. (Taken
from bulats.org)
