Need Help in Public Speaking Class

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Are there any books that will help Aspies with public speaking? Or does anyone have tips to share? My instructor requires that we make eye contact with our audience, use natural voice animation, and make our body language fit with what we are talking about. I know about the forehead trick to make it appear that I'm making eye contact, but what else can I do? I really need help. Thanks.

Hey! I'm an Aspie, and I've done a lot of public speaking over the past few years (it's scary for sure, but it's really exciting to think that you can speak to all of those people and maybe change their life for the better with your words.) You can totally get good at it--don't worry

A few tips that come to mind

1)When memorizing your speech, try to think of natural progressions between the different sentences and ideas. That way, instead of relying on rote memorization, you can see how the different ideas and sentences flow together, and it makes the speech much easier to remember. It also makes it more obvious what body language and tone you should use, because instead of just saying words, you can see the whole flow of the speech.

As an example, I once gave a speech by MLK in a speech competition, and I used this technique. I'll post an excerpt from the speech, and then in parenthesis show you what I mean by thinking of natural progressions. Here's the excerpt

"...somehow in some of the dark moments we have been able to stand up before our violent oppressors and say:
We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. (how do they match the capacity? Answer: By meeting physical force with soul force) We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. (What will happen when they don't obey the law? They will get thrown in jail) And so throw us in jail and we will still love you. (When they are in jail, they can't protect their homes) Burn our homes and threaten our children and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you....

(The speech continues and is well worth an entire read. If you want, you can read it on my site here: http://improveyoursocialskills.com/martin-luther-king-jr . My site also has lots of tips on social skills in general, so it might be worth checking out the rest of the site if you're curious

2) For body language, the most important thing is to be confident and positive. Ie, don't put your hands in your pockets, don't cross your arms, don't slouch, face your audience completely, etc. Act like you are happy to be up there and you are confident the audience is going to love your speech.
You can also add in body language that punctuates different parts of your speech--for instance, opening your arms wide when discussing something really big, or pointing to the audience to emphasize a key point. But making sure that your body language is confident and positive will get you 80% of the way there. If that's all you focus on, you will probably do fine.

3) Practice your speech multiple times. By this, I mean you should practice your speech until you feel like you have it nailed, then stop and do something else for awhile, then come back and try your speech again. If you can still remember the speech after it's left your short-term memory, then you can feel very confident that you'll remember it when you're supposed to give it.

4) If you forget part of your speech, just keep going with the next thing that you can remember. Nobody else knows what the speech is supposed to sound like, and chances are if you skip over a paragraph or ad lib a few sentences, nobody will notice. It will almost always be more noticeable for you to stop and fish for a memory that's not there than for you to just keep going smoothly into the next thing.

5) If you make any kind of mistake, don't freak out. The audience is on your side (after all, they'd rather see a good speech than a bad speech.) Just recover as quickly as you can and keep going. Think of it like a marathon--if you trip, you can still win as long as you get back up as fast as possible and keep running.

Hope that helps! If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'll be happy to answer them.

I took speech in High School precisely because it was out of my comfort zone, and it was a great experience. Turned out to be a blast.

My advice: just try to have fun with it!

sorry to say so, but books wont do you much good on this part.

one thing i can say however, is to fool yourself into thinking you are either alone, or talking about your special interest.
what i did when i needed to speak in front of an audience (any audience) was just tune them out and think i was talking to a mirror.
the only disadvantage of this method is that you most likely wont notice if there are questions or hints that you need to hurry up, slow down or stop, so plan an audience check every 2-3 minutes where you drop the cover a bit.

if you speak more often, you'll get better and more at ease naturally; i have reached the point where i dont need the cover when doing a prepared speech (though i do when i'm tricked into improvising one)