It is easy to become your own worst critic while giving a speech. If audience members are yawning or frowning, such feedback can increase your speech anxiety.21 Do not fall into the trap of making negative judgments as you speak. There is a good chance that a frowning classmate is trying to remember where he left his keys or worrying about an upcoming math test.

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Even if you do make a serious mistake during your speech, do not give up. Your classmates will be hoping you recover and finish strong. We have seen one student’s outline disappear when her iPad crashed midspeech, another remain silent for two minutes while putting a jumbled pile of note cards in the right order, and a third watch his dog (a visual aid) have an “accident” as the speech concluded. In these situations, the first postspeech comment from an audience member has consistently been a supportive statement about the speaker’s effort to recover.