Good morning everyone!

Did you realize that today is exactly fourteen weeks since we first walked through that door to begin this course of English Public Speaking? During this course so far we have spent a total of 19 and a half hours here in B-4087.

Imagine that!

Now is a good time for us to remind ourselves of two very important questions. One: why did we come to this course? And two: what have we learned?

Let us start with the first question: Why did we come here? The obvious answer would be, of course, to get the two ECTS credits that this course offered. After all, you can never have enough credits. The second equally-obvious reason is that this course is compulsory for those of us who want to become interpreters.

And the third reason, which in my opinion is the most important: We came here to learn to speak. Okay, we all can speak. But as we should know by now, there is a huge difference between public speaking and just "speaking." You could say that in one sense all speaking is public speaking, if you don't count speaking to yourself when there is no one there to hear you. But for this speech I will define public speaking as speaking formally to a group of listeners.

Maybe you took this course because you have a dream. You came here so that one day that dream might come true. One day you will finish a speech that leaves a lasting impression on your audience. They will applaud and applaud, begging for more, and all they will be able to say is "Wow, that was a great speech. I have never heard anything like that".

Just think about it!

What would it be like to be able to influence people in the way that great speakers such as Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and, unfortunately, Adolf Hitler could. Their speeches are still remembered years and years later. Now you may feel like you're still a long way from being a world leader, but this is a good start. If you want to promote your own ideas, if you want people to listen to you, and indeed, if you want to be a great leader who makes history, then you have to study public speaking. Public speaking skills count. They count enormously. And even if you're not going to make history, it is still one of the most important skills required to succeed in today's competitive work place. Any workplace. Powerful public speaking is real power.

Speaking effectively and powerfully is a skill that is really worth learning. And, fortunately, public speaking is something you can learn. Height and hair color may be in our genes. Public speaking is not. It is a skill that can be studied, polished, and even more or less perfected. All it takes is a lot of hard work. With hard work and persistence you can not only get good at it, you can get damned good at it, and that makes a heck of a difference.

So, how far are we still from holding the audience in our hands? In other words: What have we learned?

The first thing we all learned was that the two lousy ECTS credits, which were the reason why most of us came here in the first place, were not nearly enough for all the stress and anxiety we have been through during these fourteen weeks. Not to mention the nightmares of the "fat black bucks in the wine barrel room..." Surely Vachel Lindsay is still haunting you every night. He sure is haunting me!

No doubt we have also learned a few things about nervousness. I believe we have all experienced sweaty palms, accelerated heart beating, memory loss, or even difficulty in breathing while standing here in the podium. But that is nothing to be ashamed of. Despite the obvious benefits of good public speaking skills, the truth is that most people rank public speaking as their number one fear. Even the fear of dying comes only seventh. Everyone is more or less nervous. Mark Twain said it best: "There are two types of speakers: those who are nervous and those who are liars."

But judging from the fact that we are all still here, we have also learned to overcome that nervousness. And every time we get up here to give a talk, it becomes a little bit easier. There is nothing that will instantly make you calm, except, of course, tranquilizers. But the only healthy way to achieve true calmness is practice. Practice and preparing. Remember: "He who fails to prepare is preparing to fail." And if that doesn't work, just act. If you appear calm, the audience will never know how close you are to having a nervous breakdown, running out of the room and never coming back.

The most important thing to do, if you're nervous about giving a speech, is to put the whole thing into perspective. What's there to be afraid of anyway? Does world peace hang on the result of this one speech? It probably doesn't, since you're not a world leader yet. Are people going to die as a result? No, no-one will die, no matter how badly you fail. And will it be something that you will even remember in five years' time? If you try real hard to forget, you won't even remember it tomorrow. Some fears we have for a good reason. But fear of public speaking? There is no good reason. It is completely irrational.

Once we've gotten over the worst of our fear we will stand up, walk up here and then what? We have learned how to stand here, where to look (not up there), and what to do with these (gestures with her hands). We have also become familiar with the importance of proper pronunciation and enunciation, which you need in order to help the audience understand what you are saying.

Proper phrasing and adequate volume are also needed, so that the audience can hear you easily. Natural gestures can make the speech more effective, and so on. These may all seem like small things, and individually perhaps they are, but collectively they are not. They are the beginning of learning a great skill - a skill that is worth all the nervousness, anxiety and hard work we have had to endure.

And who knows, it is possible that the skill we are learning might even help us conquer the world one day.

Thank you.