Pauses

This next homework assignment is really easy.

I’m going to ask you to do is nothing.

I’m gonna ask you to pause at some point in your presentation.

What is a pause.

It’s simply doing nothing.

It’s shutting your mouth and doing nothing now.

It’s a lot of things you’re going to be asked to do in life in various courses and in real life and in business.

Not that many of them involve just doing nothing.

And that’s all I’m asking you to do.

So this is a pretty easy assignment.

Now I say it’s easy when you’re in front of people.

Most of us have some fear of public speaking and when we’re in front of people that we almost feel naked and we want to sort of finish this up so we can get out of here.

So what most people do is they start speaking as quickly as possible they don’t have any pauses because they forget as soon as I finish this is that I can sit down and get out of here.

No one will stare at me anymore.

So psychologically could be difficult to pause can feel awkward.

You could feel like you’re just there exposed but great speakers do it.

So I want you to give your whole speech again.

Again just one minute.

But after a big thought after the end of one paragraph pause for five minutes.

Not even for five seconds but just a couple of SEC even a second and a half is enough of a pause that it provides a contrast between the pausing between words or sentences which may only be half of a second or a quarter of a second.

So let’s do the whole presentation again.

This time I want you to consciously pause at least a couple of times in your one minute speech.

Do it record it watch it and determine if you in fact did add the pauses.