Like many students, you might find it extremely stressful and overwhelming to make oral presentations in class to the teacher and the rest of your classmates. It is understandable that you don’t feel comfortable having to make a presentation to several people, since you feel that you don’t have enough experience and might feel a bit nervous. However, there are some techniques you can use to leave your shyness behind and expose yourself to the public without any insecurities.
How can you make the best oral presentations in class?
Learning to do oral presentations in class is extremely important, since having good presentation skills can make a difference in your professional and personal future. For this reason, we explain the most effective tips to improve your communicative skills and leave behind all your doubts.
1. Support material
Online tools can help complement and enrich your presentations and make them more enjoyable for your audience. For example, you can use GoConqr’s online slides to display the key points of your presentation in a visually appealing way. These resources can also help you if you go blank; just take a look at the notes written in the slide and you’ll recover the rhythm of your speech.
2. Try to maintain eye contact
The nerves you feel at the beginning of oral presentations can be reduced with a simple but effective trick: look into the eyes of 
the people that are listening. In this way, your presentation is much more personal and intimate, and you stop perceiving the audience as an abstract concept that causes insecurities. Visual contact provokes empathy and humanity to the viewer, so your speech will be transmitted with greater energy and your communicative ability will improve.
3. Memorize key phrases
Going blank is the great fear of many students when doing oral presentations in class, but the reality is that it is something that can be easily avoided by memorizing the key phrases of each section of your presentation, so that you can structure your speech around them. This way, you reduce the risk of making a mess or not knowing what to say next, since you have a series of memorized phrases that serve as a reference during the presentation.
4. Don’t stress too much!
Putting too much pressure on yourself can be counterproductive… So relax! Prepare the oral presentation as if you had to explain an anecdote to trusted friends; try to convey the learning concepts in your own words and with some informality. So if you make mistakes or confuse some term it won’t stand out so much; the key is to show naturalness and hide your nervousness. In this way, any mistakes you make will be less likely to benoticed by your audience (including teachers!) and you will feel more comfortable doing your speech.
5. Rehearse many times
The more times you rehearse your oral presentations, the better. If you analyse the times your oral presentations in class went wrong or you were too nervous, you’ll probably notice that you didn’t prepare them too well. It is helpful to divide the written script into different phases: practice on your own firsthand when you have already rehearsed your speech, present it to known and trusted people. It is important that relatives or friends to whom you do your presentation are able to make constructive criticism and indicate the aspects you can improve
Applying these tips can help you gradually improve your discursive skills and eventually become a great communicator. However, you must be patient and accept that improvements will progressively come through the practice and experiences you have in your presentations.