I'm currently 19, a Psychology student studying in Tunku Abdul Rahman University located in Malaysia, speaks Mandarin as my mother-tongue. I posted a topic 4 years ago, when I was only 15. I had so much fun looking back at what I have posted and I'm glad that I did posted that topic to seek for advises
Here is the link : Search for the topic "Being Bad In Languages, will affects my communication?" in the "Public Speaking" forum. I wasn't able to post the link, sorry.
4 years down the road, and I'm able to speak fluently in front of numerous audience. Presenting the information straight and accurate towards them. Not to say flawlessly, there are still mistakes in my speech, stage-fright occurs every time, and there's still grammatical errors in my writings and speeches, but this forum, especially this thread had been my source of motivation for the past 4 years, to force myself to have the determination to at least improve my English to a standard where people can understand without having hard time interpreting it.
To those that are facing problems in doing presentations, my advice would be - Don't worry that much, be confident with your content, be confident with your language and then just speak like nobody's business. Don't be afraid of getting embarrassed (even thought you speak like a broken CD playing in an old vintage CD player) as this is part of the process. Be confident, and take the first step to learn, accept critics, analyze the critics and improve yourself.
You don't have to be a genius to give a public speech. World's number 1 fear can be cured if you're willing to fight against it. ALL THE BEST !!
