Moya Lázaro, Fernando.
Giving a speech or a presentation is something really difficult for Spanish people because we have never been taught on how to do it. It is a matter of education; in the Anglo-Saxon education children learn from the very early age how to express their ideas in front of people. In Spain, there are many students that have never been in front of their class to expose or uphold his work. I know some American people and Canadian, and they told me that they gave presentations when they were at school more than four times a month.
In the web site we can learn useful sentences and tips. But we cannot get confidence through studying. So, we have to get it from ourselves. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, because it is so essential for us that we have to bring down this barrier by all means. When you get confidence, it doesn’t come alone. It comes with fluency, brightness and clarity. Vocabulary is important but firstly, it is better to know how to use properly the vocabulary that you already have. This is a lesson that I must take soon…
One valuable point is also the pauses. A well-done pause points out what you want to communicate, and also gives time to the audience to understand every point and ingrain the ideas. Some of the most shocking words were never said. You only have to remember how your father looked at you when you did something wrong, yes, he did not need words.
Why does it happen more to Spaniards? This fear comes from culture. We are too self-conscious and we are ashamed of what we have not done yet. People from UK or Canada or EUA love accents and mispronounced words; they don’t care whether you make mistakes or not; provided that your message is clear. This is one of the multiple things that we have to learn from Anglo-Saxon culture because if Spanish people were polite, punctual (something almost impossible), confident and good communicators, we would be a major country.
For further information about talking business:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/business/talkingbusiness/