Virtual Audience Platform Speaking Training

PRPSA Scale

Discuss About The Virtual Audience Platform Speaking Training?

Public speaking is one of the most researched anxiety tests in the academic field. This test includes thirty four questions which help to comprehend the fears that are associated with the public speaking such as giving a presentation or answering question in the class (Niles et al., 2015). There are five scores for each of the question, Strongly Disagree = 1; Disagree = 2; Neutral = 3; Agree = 4; Strongly Agree = 5. There is a methodical way for determining the total score of PRASA. Firstly, the scores for the questions 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34 will be added. Secondly, the scores of 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, and 26 will be added separately. The third step is a formula:

According to Williams (2017), the scores of the PRASA test can be category-zed in five ways. The scores from 34 to 84 fall in the low anxiety category; scores from 85 to 92 fall in the moderately low anxiety category; scores from 93 to 110 indicate to moderate anxiety; scores from 111 to 119 fall in the moderately high anxiety category and scores from 120 to 170 are indication of high anxiety. The scores are always supposed to be between 34 and 170, if not, there must be some mistake with the score computation. () has indicated that the minimum scores in the PRASA have been hardly reported, in most of the cases the students have reported to be with higher anxiety.

I had scored 119 in the PRPSA scale, which indicates that I am moderately anxious while talking publicly. I have faced this problem with giving a presentation three months back. We were given a topic a month before the presentation and we got sufficient time for preparing for the presentation. I chose a topic according to my comfort level and I was quite confident with the presentation I prepared. However, on the very day of the presentation, I was utterly nervous which resulted into fumbling during the presentation. According to the PRPSA scale, this can indicate to moderately high anxiety. There, from this incident, I could identify that I have an anxiety issue which need further attention. I also get nervous talking to someone superior such as the principal or to the professor after any conference or lecture. With the findings of the PRPSA scale results, I had identified that I am having this fear of public speaking which is sometimes leading to panic attack and jeopardizing my professional career. Therefore, it was evident that this flaw of mine requires additional attention and support for personal communication development; otherwise it will have a negative influence on my professional career in my later life as well.

Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC)

The Self- Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC) has been developed for obtaining the data of how competent an individual feels, while he or she faces diverse communication contexts and different types of receivers of communication. As individuals tend to make their own decisions regarding what they have to do while they are communicating, it is very much important to measure the perception of the individual. The self perception is very much important for the person him or herself, not for the observer (Ghani & Azhar, 2017). Therefore the individuals should measure their communication competence which is basically the measurement of their perceived competence. The measurement of communication competence generates alpha reliability estimates and has a strong validity. There is a definite process for calculating the scores of the scale.

Public                          item 1 + item 8 + item 12; divide by 3. 

Meeting                               3 +         6 +         10; divide by 3. 

Group                                  4 +         9 +         11; divide by 3. 

Dyad (interpersonal)            2 +        5 +            7; divide by 3. 

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Stranger                              1 +       4 +    7   + 10; divide by 4. 

Acquaintance                     2 +       6 +    9    + 12; divide by 4. 

Friend                                 3 +       5 +    8   + 11; divide by 4.

In order to get the total score, the sub-scores are required to be added for Acquaintance, Stranger and Friend, and then it has to be divided by 3. There are also norms for comparing the scores.

Public > 86 High SPCC         < 51 Low SPCC

Meeting           > 85 High SPCC         < 51 Low SPCC

Group > 90 High SPCC         < 61 Low SPCC

Dyad   > 93 High SPCC         < 68 Low SPCC

Stranger           > 79 High SPCC         < 31 Low SPCC

Acquaintance > 92 High SPCC         < 62 Low SPCC

Friend > 99 High SPCC         < 76 Low SPCC

Total    > 87 High SPCC         < 59 Low SPCC

The higher scores indicate that the individual has higher self perceived communication competence for the primary communication contexts such as meetings, public or group and receivers such as acquaintance, strangers and friend. My scores indicate that I have a low SPCC score within the communication context. A similar incident happened around five months back also indicate to the same. My professor had asked me to lead a group of friends with seven other students with a project. While trying to lead them with the project I realized that I am quite nervous and I am not comfortable enough to interact with them. I was unable to communicate my ideas with them and was very nervous when someone was asking a question to me. Therefore I realized that I will require putting more emphasis on improving the self perception. The scores indicate that I have low SPCC scores to almost every case, even with my friends sometimes. I have also experienced issues while talking in public and interacting with others as I tend to feel shy and nervous around them, therefore I have realized that this would also require more attention as it may create with my professional life in the later life.

Literature Review

Most of the people in the surroundings have the fear of speaking in public. For some this fear becomes so prevalent that the individual may stop interacting with others or making any face to face interactions or taking any course which may involve active participation (Wan, 2013). This kind of anxiety can be classified as the state of apprehension and uneasiness and fear which is caused by anticipating something intimidating. As stated by Steele & Plenty (2015) the anxiety while speaking publicly is quite common amongst the students, even though it is quite prevalent amongst the general population as well. The person with high public speaking anxiety tends to avoid the situations that can provide more anxiety, however sometimes these situations are unavoidable, such as in college or while taking any course. In such situations, the individual deal with an intense feeling of distress and anxiety. According to Homer, Deeprose & Andrade (2016), the anticipatory anxiety can also occur because the individual may start to imagine about the situation, before it starts happening to them, or before any kind of actual experience. In most situations, the individuals with the public speaking anxiety tend to identify that their fear is unreasonable and excessive, but in most cases they are unable to shift their response without any kind of assistance. There are several kinds of experiences that can be faced by the individual suffering from public speaking anxiety such as seating, palpitations, muscle tension, gastrointestinal discomfort, confusion etc. Baxter (2016) has stated that around eighty five percent of the general population tend to experience some kind of anxiety or fear while they are speaking in public. It has also been indicated that the stage fright or the public speaking can be investigated and cured at some point of time. There are many individuals around who speak for their living such as politicians, business executives, actors, comedians etc. Sometimes, the students also have to speak publicly during their courses, for giving any presentation or teaching others or leading a group of unknown for any projects etc. In case of the general population, sometimes the fear of peaking publicly gets so intense that it may cause harm for their performances. On the other hand, the students who tend to become anxious regarding their public speaking, they often avoid such social events or stop talking to their classmates. Batrinca et al. (2013) has indicated that the anxiety amongst the students mostly centers on speaking or listening. The students, who get very much anxious while speaking in the class addressing the students, may be very much comfortable responding to the teacher. After getting anxious, the students can also experience difficulties to discriminate the structures and sounds of what is being said and catch their feelings.

Another anxiety attack can be faced while dealing with peer groups. According to Campbell & Larson (2013), this can be caused due to fear of rejection in the group and low self confidence. There can be several reasons that can cause this fear such as difficult life events or bad experiences in the childhood, stress, pressure or personality. However, it can entirely influence the self-esteem in the individual and create a sense of fear while they are talking in their peer group. According to (), low self esteem can be very harmful for the individuals sometimes as it can limit the career development. Having low self confidence can keep the individual in a same place for years, as they may be less interested in taking challenges within their work places. Other than that, low self esteem can also cause disturbed mind and individuals tend to develop a set of unhelpful behavior which may result into damaged relationship or addiction to something. Felnhofer et al. (2014) has also said that mental health and low self confidence can both reinforce each other creating a cycle.

North, North & Coble (2015) suggests that there are several ways to deal with the fear of speaking publicly and low self confidence. At the initial stage, the individual requires investigating where and why the fear is caused. They may make a list of things or ways which can help them to cope up with the entire situation. In addition to that, there can be various ways which can help the individual out of the situation such as warming up the body before speaking in public or breathing deeply. This may not help directly, but it will help the individual to cope up with the situation and have a higher self confidence. Sometimes, even taking the pressure of the forthcoming events can be very much helpful for the individuals while dealing with the situation (North, North & Coble, 2015). If someone has a speech on the next day, they should stop thinking whatever is going to happen; rather it would help them if they think of their previous mistakes and take them as a learning stone. It would help them in shaping their speech and make an effective speaker.

In case of having low self-confidence, the individuals can identify the particular physical symptoms, feelings or the associated behavior which can cause such a mental situation; they can trigger such experiences and can try to make it better. Also, it is very important to understand own self-worth. Therefore they should immediately change their derogatory thoughts which they make in their minds. Removing such thoughts will improve the situation and help to cope up with the situation. In addition to that, it is also necessary to assess the behavior of the individual (Niles, 2014). There may be different situations which make them self conscious or influence them in a way that impacts their self esteem. Therefore, these negative thoughts should be removed immediately and in that way they can gradually boost the confidence in themselves.

The two identified issues with the characteristics are- lack of confidence in giving presentation and problem in giving direction to the team members for accomplishing a certain job. Thus, this section will represent the necessary actions through which the issues can be overcome.

Section	Planned Actions	Effective strategies and practices	Target date for completion
Improving self-confidence to communicate in front of many people	-To undertake specific short courses for developing communication skills -Learn about power networking and emphasizing empathy – Attain knowledge regarding how to speak with confidence and optimistically   -Reading specific communication texts and self-help books “The fine art of small talk”, “92 tricks for how to talk to anyone” and “crucial conversation”.	-Opting advanced post graduate communication courses	1st and 2nd month
-Highlight the major points of the presentation and gain in-depth knowledge regarding the topics. -Ask for feedbacks after every presentation and highlight the drawbacks in the communication -Overcome the problem by learning about the solutions through different books or taking suggestions from mentors and teachers	3rd and 4th  month
– Regularly giving the psychometric tests to assess the effectiveness of the communication skills.	5th month
– maintaining personal journals reflecting on communication interactions -Assess the progress by comparing the performance in the initial stages and current times -Identifying gaps and areas of improvements so that the problem in communicating in front of others can be overcome	5th to 6th Month
Developing guiding skills to direct the team members	-Reading communication self help books like “crucial conversation”, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, “The Definitive Book of Body Language” and “Power Questions: Build Relationships, Win New Business and Influence Others” to improve the leadership skills to provide guidance to the team members and followers -Learn about different leadership skills through which proper guidance can be provided to team members	– Listen to the team member’s queries. -Identify the best suited solutions for the incident and research for other alternatives if proper solution is not found	1st and 2nd month
-Implementing the theories of communication skills and body language practically and assess the development of every week.	3rd month
-Reading about different leadership styles and their implementation -Giving psychometric tests based on leadership to assess the behavioral aspect -Select the best suitable leadership styles that can be adapted for guidance -Implement the selected leadership style and ask for feedback from the team members. Moreover, the performance of the members is also assessed to evaluate the effectiveness of the leadership style.	4th to 6th Month

3.1.1 Improving self-confidence

• Less hesitation in front of others- After this action plan, I will be able to understand others and communicate my thoughts and perspective to others.
• Ability to make other understand- Following this action plan, I will be able to provide proper justification regarding my selected points of the presentation and answer their queries.

  3.1.2 Developing guiding skills

• Better performance of the team-members- This action plan allows me to implement the selected leadership style and ask for. Their positive feedback from the team members also allow me to assess my guidance skills
• Less conflict- The better communication with my team members’ results in lesser conflicts that I can attained through the above action plan.

Reference list

Niles, A. N., Craske, M. G., Lieberman, M. D., & Hur, C. (2015). Affect labeling enhances exposure effectiveness for public speaking anxiety. Behaviour research and therapy, 68, 27-36.

Hunter, K. M., Westwick, J. N., & Haleta, L. L. (2014). Assessing success: The impacts of a fundamentals of speech course on decreasing public speaking anxiety. Communication Education, 63(2), 124-135.

Williams, D. (2017). Foundational Concepts Of Effective Business Communication.

Bartholomay, E. M., & Houlihan, D. D. (2016). Public Speaking Anxiety Scale: Preliminary psychometric data and scale validation. Personality and Individual Differences, 94, 211-215.

Gilchrist, E. M. C. (2013). Effects of video self-modelling as an intervention for teenagers with public speaking anxiety.

Niles, A. N. (2014). Does affect labeling enhance exposure effectiveness for public speaking anxiety?.

Švarcová, Z. (2017). Online self-help: Investigation into lowering public speaking anxiety using a virtual reality smartphone app (Doctoral dissertation, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology).

Wan, J. (2013). Localization of the English public speaking course in China’s EFL curriculum. Asian Social Science, 9(1), 94.

Shahbaz, M., Khan, M. S., Khan, R. M. I., & Mustafa, G. (2016). Role of self-perceived communication competence and communication apprehension for willingness to communicate in L1 and L2. Journal of Educational and Social Research, 6(1), 158.

Ghani, M., & Azhar, S. W. (2017). Effect of Motivation, Willingness to Communicate (WTC), Self Perceived Communicative Competence (SPCC) and L2 Anxiety on the Frequency of Use of English as L2. Journal of Educational Research, 20(1), 157.

Barr, M. (2016). Using Video Games to Develop Communication Skills in Higher Education.

Steele, G. A., & Plenty, D. (2015). Supervisor–subordinate communication competence and job and communication satisfaction. International Journal of Business Communication, 52(3), 294-318.

Homer, S. R., Deeprose, C., & Andrade, J. (2016). Negative mental imagery in public speaking anxiety: Forming cognitive resistance by taxing visuospatial working memory. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 50, 77-82.

Baxter, J. (Ed.). (2016). Speaking out: The female voice in public contexts. Springer.

Batrinca, L., Stratou, G., Shapiro, A., Morency, L. P., & Scherer, S. (2013, August). Cicero-towards a multimodal virtual audience platform for public speaking training. In International Workshop on Intelligent Virtual Agents (pp. 116-128). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

North, M. M., North, S. M., & Coble, J. R. (2015). Virtual reality therapy: an effective treatment for the fear of public speaking. International Journal of Virtual Reality (IJVR), 3(3), 1-6.

Campbell, S., & Larson, J. (2013). Public Speaking Anxiety: Comparing Face-to-Face and Web-Based Speeches. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 10.

Felnhofer, A., Kothgassner, O. D., Hetterle, T., Beutl, L., Hlavacs, H., & Kryspin-Exner, I. (2014). Afraid to be there? Evaluating the relation between presence, self-reported anxiety, and heart rate in a virtual public speaking task. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(5), 310-316.