That girl from America's next top model.

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Sometimes. For me I don't really care... I just get on and do it.

I've done drama for years though so it probably helps, but I just figure if you've practised then you shouldn't have a problem. It's not like anyone there knows you, and the ones who do aren't gonna hold anything against you even if you were to turn blue, freeze, and jump out the window. So no worries.

"Stage fright" is not an Aspie thing.... lots and lots of NT's have it too.

Nothing about AS prevents you from delivering a speech - especially since there's no interaction involved, really... you're talking AT the audience. Maybe even lecturing them.

She later explained that she hadn't heard the question properly so she didn't know what to say and this lack of knowledge pushed her to take attempt to answer so it's not an issue of her stupidity.

I think communication problems is part of AS.

...Exactly why I enjoy it so much. For once in my life they HAVE to listen to me.

This is from Gillberg's AS criteria:

Contrasted to Asperger's, those with autism have difficulty in sustaining and/or initiating a conversation. As well as repetition of language. DSM-IV-TR on communicative difficulties in autism:

best thing for public speaking is practice. i have done several semesters of teaching bio courses and presenting data and such to audiences and teaching in martial arts classes.... you kind of get used to it. really helps to have to do the same talk over and over... makes your practicing on new things more efficient. was really helpful to me to get all those teaching evals back from students to get a feel for how i am perceived. i still have anxiety over what kinds of questions will be asked the first time i give any talk cause i never know where they will come from. but once i have an idea of that... im usually comfortable enough to try and through in some jokes and such to keep the audience awake!

Maybe it's just me, but it didn't seem "stupid". It seemed like NONSENSE! In other words, it wasn't like a person saying something dumb in english, something that expressed a dumb opinion or lies. It was like a person speaking GIBBERISH that merely sounded like english!

GRANTED, I am able to DECIPHER what she is trying to say. "Americans in the US don't have maps. The U.S. is teaching people in Iraq and South Africa, and "such as"(whatever that is). And the U.S. education should help the U.S., Iraq, South Africa. and the asian countries to make things better for our children".

Aw heck, maybe I CAN'T! I tried to make sense without removing or adding ideas or assuming. MAYBE she is smarter than she sounds and was trying to show what it does for her by example!?!?

I speak HINDI better than she made her english sound. With a little work, maybe I could speak CHINESE better than she can speak english.

BTW, if you ask me, Blonds should try HARDER than others because they MIGHT have a little bit better chance because of appearance, and they have to dispell the stupid stereotypes of "dumb blond", "Blond moment", etc.... Frankly, I wished she had died her hair another color before she went on! BTW I am not blond, I just hate this type of garbage!

And I don't think I EVER sounded like THAT.

and what was the question actually? the only thing i could hear was "map" so her answer makes some sense to me. XD (snce it contains the same word lol)

i'm pretty sure my answer would be similiar or even worse if i had to answer it... XD

how much of a coherrant explanation for as to why people cant locate their own huge effing country on the map can you expect? it's bollocks i tell you. that'd be my answer

Public speaking has always been difficult for me. Part of it is the social phobia, but another part is that I can't pay attention to what I am saying and relate to the audience at the same time. It's either one or the other. During a presentation I usually act as if the audience ceases to exist. I find some object to stare at, maybe the face of a person whom I know and feel good around, and my eyes stay there throughout the speech; I can sometimes shift them a couple of times somewhere else, in a rather awkward way, but then I easily lose track of what I was saying. I can't gesture the way I usually do either, my hand motions are either not there at all or become a constricted, stereotyped movement of one hand toward my chest and back. Again, it's near impossible to divide my attention between this and the words I am saying. Subjectively, I can't say that I even see the audience all the time; sometimes I don't seem to be aware of their presence.

Part of it, I think, is that it is difficult for me to formulate my thoughts, so that I need to take time to structure what I'm going to say before speaking it aloud. In private conversation it's not a great problem, though it can be embarrassing - I can sound not very coherent or go on tangents, but still make myself understood in the end, through rephrasing, clarifying etc., and I know this. I can also be as slow as I like. But in a situation where I am pressed for time and have to make my speech as smooth and perfect-sounding as possible, it becomes far more difficult. As a result, I tend to concentrate only on the words themselves; everything else including body language, eye contact, or the intonations I am using (and, if I'm talking in English, the pronunciation as well) goes right out the window, because even without these things, the speaking is a hard enough task in itself.

Granted, I can easily learn the speech by rote and deliver it like this, but I don't like doing it that way. I always end up sounding like a robot, which doesn't feel right at all, and I'm also very dependent on the text - if I happen to forget a certain word or the beginning of a sentence, I may not be able to go on at all. It feels like something foreign that has been inserted into my mind, which has little to do with my own thoughts, and if some part of it eludes me, I don't seem to be able to pick it up from there once again. So I prefer to rely only on a sheet with the basic points of my presentation (which make sure I don't wander off in a totally different direction, and keep me at least relatively on track), and to sound perhaps less coherent, but to be sure that I'm speaking my own mind and in my own way.

The "stage fright", of course, only makes this worse. It's even more difficult to formulate my thoughts well and to coordinate the words with the movements, eye contact and whatever else is there when I am anxious, and feel that a whole classroom of barely familiar people are staring at me (which I don't like a single bit). That said, I don't think the anxiety and/or panic attacks are my main problem. The panic usually starts to subside after a while, and I've gradually learned to treat it as a purely physical symptom and to try and carry on talking in spite of it, so that eventually it will go away and speaking will become easier. But the coordination/attention and speech organization problems are always there.

Last year at university, we had a literary/linguistic conference at which everyone could present their BA theses if they wished. We got marks for this and, if we were satisfied with them, there was no need to do the oral BA defense. I knew what I was going to say and, as usual, I made a rough draft for my speech at the very last moment, sitting on the window sill while the preparations for the conference were taking place. Later, when the conference had already started and I was sitting among the participants, I made another, better draft with my main points. The speech itself wasn't as bad as I expected - I managed to go through it more or less smoothly (or so it seemed to me), though I did lose track of my thoughts several times. I was mostly staring at a former tutor of mine who was sitting among the audience, a very nice woman whom I liked a lot (I don't think I really saw her most of the time, though); a few times I shifted my gaze to other people, but it made me uncomfortable and I felt I was on the verge of forgetting what I wanted to say. Of course I didn't notice the "5 minutes left" sign when it was flashed at me, and continued to speak too long, though not so long as to reduce my mark. I don't know what my body language was like, I kept forgetting about it, and probably made that same bound, awkward hand movement over and over again. When the presentation was over and it was time for the questions, I relaxed somewhat, but answering them was difficult all the same, again because of the trouble I have finding adequate phrasing for my thoughts. After one of the questions I blanked out completely; my mind went empty and I stood there like an idiot for half a minute or so, desperately trying to find something to say, and feeling a rising panic because I knew that if I didn't, my presentation would pretty much be ruined. They had asked me about the definition of the fable (my presentation was about the genre of Golding's "The double tongue", and I suggested that it should be treated as a fable, just like Golding himself saw it), it was a really simple question, so I don't know why I reacted like this. After some time passed, I felt the blank lift, thankfully, and was able to give a more or less appropriate definition.

I was given a 7 (lower B) for the presentation, which surprised me because I thought it would be a disaster compared to how others were speaking. Later, I was told in a civil way that my presentation had been mostly fine, with a perfect vocabulary and such, and interesting ideas, but that "my sentences were formulated in a rather peculiar and overly complex manner and it was sometimes difficult to understand what I was saying". Which, I suppose, translated from politically-correct-ese into normal human language, means that my speech was near incomprehensible.

Still, I actually enjoyed taking part in that conference, draining as it was. There was a wonderful friendly atmosphere which is rarely there at our university, and I felt supported and appreciated by others, which was a sort of goft in itself.

Last edited by ixochiyo_yohuallan on 16 Dec 2007, 2:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Likho, you're from my country, so: http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/ ... 41895.html

"I'm glad I'm allowed to answer this question one more time. So, in general, all my acquintances know well where the United States is. I don't know anybody who wouldn't know this. If the statistics are right, we absolutely should put more emphasis on the learning of geography in schools so as people learn how to read maps."

"Everyhing happened so suddenly. It simply surpassed me, in fact I heard perhaps two words from all the question and I didn't understand anything. I've made a mistake but we all make them. We're only people."

It looks that her "answer" may be safely put down to the fact that she couldn't hear what she was asked about but it's only her fault, nobody's else that she didn't hit upon an idea to ask for repeating the question one more time if she was unable to hear it well. But on the other hand, it was a stressful situation for her to answer questions in public when all the eyes were directed towards her, even despite of the fact that she has been got used to speaking at presence of people observing each her movement and listening to her each word.

Well, I have never been good with geography. I might have a problem finding, say, west virginia.(Others, like alaska, hawaii, california, texas, maine, florida, etc... are just too easy to identify.) I have just not been that interested, or found it that important. I CAN locate my state, and the country. I could, on a big map, show you approximately where my city is(Even if it doesn't even mention the big cities).

I don't know how true those statistics are, and many "americans" weren't even born in the US and many that WERE born in the US are really FAR more interested in ANOTHER country. Still, Classes cover a lot of other things, and some of them are real nonsense. Most "education" these days really gives little attention to a childs weaknesses or strengths.

BTW Sorry I didn't mention Asia, Africa, Iraq, etc... The question never asked about them anyway.

Irulan,

I think you already answered this. If so, please forgive me. Do they still teach russian in Poland? Are polish kids likely to know russian?

I didn't answer your question; you even didn't ask But I'm doing it now: even though Russian is still taught here, it doesn't take place often. Now it's mostly English while German occupies the second place. Russian occupies one of more distant places on the list, together with Spanish, Latin and French. I can't recall any other languages being taught here (maybe only Italian and it's, I guess, everything). I knew only several people from my generation who had lessons of this language at school. Maybe it was more popular a decade ago, now I don't recall a person who's still at school and has Russian lessons. When I was 12, I was sent to a sanitary because of my health problems and we used to attend school there. In my group there were maybe 17 kids, I don't remember exactly and only two of them had been taught Russian before so only those two had lessons because the only foreign language teacher they had there was Russian language teacher and the rest of us were sitting in the classroom and doing everything we were allowed to do during lesson in that time. I think that schools look for Russian teachers only if they can't find any English or German language teachers.

Btw, we have American studies course in my school (and a year before we used to have American history course too) but NOBODY likes those lessons - that teacher with whom we have them is very strict. We have to learn answers by heart, in fact even without any understanding so as to be able to pass tests.

I meant I thought maybe you said something that would have answered my question, not necessarily that you responded to my inquiry. Sorry.



WOW! Oh well, I think all the USSR countries have reverted, or are likely to revert, to their original native languages, so maybe English(a leading language and probably one of the best in tradeoffs between popularity, ease, and worthwhile usability) and German (a popular language in Europe, science, related to other languages, and relatively easy to learn) will end up being better languages.



MANY in the US feel the same and, I imagine, it is even LESS liked in Russia. Most of the history isn't really applicable, ESPECIALLY to another country.

Such a small misunderstanding



I HATE German I can barely construct a sentence in it We have German lessons in our school but they're only symbolic, I'd call it this way. Dude who teaches us knows about this very well, letting us go home 30 minutes before the end of lesson, rarely checking the list of attendance (usually only half the students are present) and some weeks ago we're watching a movie about Mr Bean instead having a lesson (there were only 5 people then). I'm planning to start learning Spanish on my own but I'm a terrible procrastinator so my teach yourself book is lying on shelf for two years. I don't know even the most rudimentary vocabulary in German but now maybe it'll change because recently I found in my case a German handbook for beginners which was used by my mother or somebody of her siblings when they were in high school.




Recently we were having a contest concerning history of Great Britain (and generally knowledge of life in United Kingdom). I always liked British History and I regret we're having this subject only on the first year My team won thanks to me and I was the only one who was given an additional award - a T-shirt with our school logo. I got also a book about English and Scottish kings and queens and a calendar with British birds. Our headmaster said at presence of all the gathered spectactors that she was amazed with my knowledge. But I don't think AT ALL that it was something extraordinary - after all it was a normal knowledge everybody can have. I wasn't asked about a name of the second wife of Aethelred the Unready or which medieval king's wife was known as "Fair Maid of Kent" and what her real name was but about number of kids of Elizabeth II and other casual stuff of this kind Not a big deal to answer such questions.

Btw, I don't know if somebody have ever told you this but I think you're undeniably one of the most interesting and clever persons on Wrong Planet.