Even before he starts speaking his heart starts to beat and his mouth gets dry. He feels slightly gaseous. Once the person starts talking, the heart keeps beating rapidly and the person hears his voice tremble. The whole body starts shaking. He keeps on stammering and stuttering and prays to God for a quick end to his presentation. This is actually a common scenario we see everyday whenever people have to speak before others. “Claustrophobia”, the fear of speaking in public is rated as only second to the fear of snakes and before the fear of dying.
Symptoms include intense anxiety prior to or simply at the thought of having to verbally communicate with any group, avoidance of events which focus the roof’s attention on individuals in attendance, and may even include physical distress, nausea, or feelings of panic in such circumstances. You may also have shortness of breath, a shaky voice, rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, dizziness, dry mouth, inability to think clearly, a feeling of loss of control, blushing, stuttering, trembling and sudden sweating. Many people report stress-induced speech disorders which are only present during public speech.
Limitations We have faced a surprisingly large number of problems while working on this paper. Some of these problems had very minimal impact on the report while others caused big problems. They have been listed below. Political problems creating immense pressure during the latter part of the master. This also created problems while coordinating with group members. We had a very small sample size for our primary investigation. The problem with less number of surveyed people is that it is very difficult to identify a trend and come to a conclusion with it. So there was more reliance on secondary data.
The report is aimed at only the students of North South University and the tips and methods given are not suitable for everybody since these are very basic ideas. The report does not go in detail of the problem. The conclusions derived do not take into account factors such as age, sex, personality etc. . Historical background Historical documents indicate that public speaking was an activity and object of study in the ancient Grecian city-states and the Roman Empire. However, public speaking has probably been a part of all civilizations since very early times, maybe even as old as almost speech itself.
The first textbook on the subject was written over 2400 years ago, and the principles elaborated within it were drawn from the practices and experience of orators in ancient Greece. These basic principles have undergone modification as societies and cultures have changed, yet remained surprisingly uniform. So it will be correct to assume that the fear of public speaking (also known as ‘claustrophobia’ existed since the beginning of public speaking). It is believed to be the single most common phobia – even above death – affecting as much as 75% of all people.
We can see that this is no new problem. There have been hundreds of studies on this topic and there are organizations, such as Toastmasters International and International Training in Communication, which provide training and courses in public speaking to help to reduce the fear. Unfortunately no such ‘professional’ institutes are present in Bangladesh and a great deal needs to be done in this regard. 5. Sources and methods of data collection To gather data for our research we have relied on primary as well as secondary research.
For primary data collection we have surveyed about 1 0 students from North South university by distributing questionnaires. These students have been selected randomly without any particular order. Since our target group was ANSI students, the questionnaires were prepared to best address their views and opinions. This survey helped us to gather a wide range of views regarding the subject matter and also allowed us to identify a trend and analyze it. As the sample size for primary investigation has been small we have put a lot of emphasis on our secondary research.
