Common public speaking problems

    The use of "I feel", "I think" and "maybe"

    In the question-and-answer session of the speaking competition, many contestants began their answers with uncertain expressions like "I feel", "I guess", "I hear", "maybe" and "perhaps".

    These words show that the person is only speaking from his or her point of view. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} 

    Work on keeping your answers brief and to the point, {#blank#}2{#/blank#} . Instead of the empty-sounding "I guess", using facts, together with a clear conclusion based on those facts, is far more likely to be popular with an audience.

    Using only one speaking style

    Don't stick to the same tone. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} 

    For example, when they spoke about their dreams, some sounded romantic. Others used humor. Very few used several different styles together. Try mixing more than one style, rather than just sticking with the same one.

    Irresponsible answers

    Public speaking is different from personal conversations. You're responsible for your words. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} So you should think twice before you talk. Don't be like the student who, when asked about his opinion on book piracy（盗版）, started by saying he supported it.

    Talking around the topic rather than directly answering it

    You should focus on one point and give a clear solution. The key is to work out what question is being asked. Is it asking you to discuss a certain topic or to present your own point of view?

    Use one or two arguments together and give a strong conclusion. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} 

A. It can be boring. Try to mix it up.

B. Even though you want to answer quickly, you don't want to sound foolish.

C. Also work on delivering them with calmness and confidence.

D. Deliberate gestures and affected（做作的）expressions of feelings are improper in a successful speech.

E. Remember that judges are not judging you on whether they agree, but on your ability to say what you think clearly.

F. This lacks the support of facts and seems not to be reliable for the judges and audience.

G. Confidence is extremely important in public speaking as it lets a speaker sound more convincing.

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, texting or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name˗˗˗˗phubbers(低头族).

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight(聚光灯). In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie(自拍) in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real.

    Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying, “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stare at their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

    Music is an international language. The songs that are sung or played by instruments are beautiful to all people everywhere.

    Popular music in America is what every student likes. Students carry small radios with earphones and listen to music before class, after class and at lunch. Students with cars buy large speakers and play the music loudly as they drive on the street.

    Adult drivers listen to music on the car radio as they drive to work. They also listen to the news about sports, the weather, politics, and activities of the American people. But most of the radio broadcast is music.

    Pop or popular music singers make much money. They make a CD or tape which radio stations use in every state. Once the popular singer is heard throughout the country, young people buy his or her tapes. Some of the money from these tapes comes to the singer. Wherever the singer goes, all the young people want to meet him or her. Now the singer has become a national star.

    Besides pop music, there are two other kinds of music that is important to Americans. One is called folk music. It tells stories about the common life of Americans. The other is called western or country music. This was started by cowboys who would sing at night to the cows they were watching. Today, any music about country life and the love between a country boy and his girl is called western or country music.

    According to the findings of a new study, telling kids they're smart enhances the idea that intelligence is a genetic gift rather than a skill that ran he improved, and children who think their intelligence is fixed are not likely to pay attention to mistakes and recover from them.

    In the study publisher! online, researchers looked at 123 children who were about 7. The team assessed the children to determine whether they had a “growth mindset（思维定式）”. They asked the children to complete a fast-paced computer task while their brain activities were recorded. During the recording, researchers noted that brain activity stopped within a half-second after making a mistake. The larger the brain response was, the more the child focused on the error.

    Based on the data they collected, the researchers concluded that children with a “growth mindset” were much more likely to have a larger brain response after making a mistake, and in turn were more likely to improve their performance by paying closer attention to the task after making an error.

    For parents, the lessons are clear: for starters, don't pay praises that suggest intelligence is fixed. If a child hands you an A test, don't say “You are smart!” Instead say “Wow, that study really paid off!”

    Second, focus on using errors to work together and learn. Many parents and teachers shy away from mentioning a child's mistakes, telling them “It's OK. You'll get it next time.” without giving them the opportunity to figure out what went wrong. Instead, it's better to tell the child that mistakes happen, and to pay attention and work to figure out where and how they made the mistake.

    Nearly everyone has bad habits. That's because, try as we might, bad habits are hard to break. On the other side, good habits, such as eating more healthfully or exercising regularly, never seem to stick. As a result, most people throw up their hands and surrender.

    But now a new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin, offers some useful solutions.

    Rubin, who became interested in habits during her research on happiness, which resulted in two popular books, The Happiness Project (2009) and Happier at Home (2012), found that our inability to master unwanted behaviors was a major downer (令人沮丧的因素). So, after guiding millions of readers down the path of true contentedness, Rubin turned her investigative skills toward habits.

    Her most important find? Change is possible if we do some soul searching and identify how we respond to expectations. And, just about everybody falls into one of four personality categories: Questioners, Obligers, Rebels and Upholders.

    Rubin believes herself to be a classic Upholder, someone who forms habits relatively easily because she responds well to both other people's deadlines and her own. As to the other types, Questioners will only form a habit if it makes sense to them; Obligers work hard to meet other people's expectations but often let themselves down. And Rebels resent (反感) habits.

    "Think about the habit that you want to form and then think: "What's everything I could do to set myself up for success?" says Rubin. For example, if you want to exercise more and you're an Obliger, call your friend who lives across the street and meet at 6：30 every morning for a walk.

    One common pitfall (陷阱), says Rubin, especially when it comes to changing your diet, is lack of clarity (清楚). "You can't make a habit out of eating more healthfully, "she says. Instead, your habit should be something like: "I'm going to pack a lunch every day and bring it to work instead of eating out."

    As for exercise, Rubin recommends a strategy called pairing—coupling two activities, one that you need or want to do and one that you don't particularly want to do. Rubin, for example, only allows herself to read magazines while on fitness equipment at the gym.

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