"Speaking" of which....

[Kiwi_queen]

In my speaking class, we learned that 50% of public speaking relied on visual - meaning how you dressed and moved (ie: if you were dressed more professionally and had good posture, the audience would like your speach more than if you came in looking like a bum and fidgeted a lot)
43% of speaking relies on *how* you say things - (if you have a lot of feeling, people will be more interested in what you have to say than if you were speaking in a monotone voice)
7% of speaking relies on *what* you say (meaning, as long as you look and sound good saying it, you'll get a better reaction to reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb" than you would reciting shakespear while looking shotty and stuttering and speaking without emotion)

Also, it's important to "break the ice" when you go up to speak. Meaning, before you get on to your presentation, make some small talk with the audience, even if it's just to say "Hi, how are you all doing?" because it allows the audience to welcome you and thus let you feel less nervous about speaking.

And the best speed of speech is 120-155 words per minute. So do a word count and then time yourself speaking to see just how fast/slow you're going and practice improving as needed.

Also, remember that time and silence are warped in the speaker's mind - what seems like an eternity to the speaker really only seems like a few seconds to the audience, so if you forget your place, instead of filling in the gaps with "ums" and "ahs", just keep quiet. 9 out of 10 times, the audience won't even notice you paused (and it sounds more professional than the "ums").

And above all - when you present a speech, only use words you know how to pronounce! Nothing is worse than going up there and slaughtering words - it cuts away from your presentation and makes you sound professional.