Problem: On a lot of occasions, you have to make some public speaking. However, public speaking fills most people with dread. Humiliation is the greatest fear; self-exposure and failing to appeal to the audience come a close second. Women hate it most, since girls are pressurized from an early age to be concerned with appearance of all kinds.

Most people have plenty of insecurities, and this seems like a situation that will bring them out. If you were under pressure to be perfect, you are terrified of failing in the most public of ways.

While extroverts will feel less fear before the ordeal , it does not mean they will necessarily do it better. Some very shy people manage to shine. When I met the British Comedian Julian, he was shy and cautious, yet his TV performances are perfect.

In fact, personality is not the best predictor of who does it well. Regardless of what you are like in real life, the key seems to be to act yourself.

Actual acting, as in performing the scripted lines of a character other than yourself, does not do the job. While politicians may limit damage by having carefully rehearsed, written scripts to speak from, there is always a hidden awareness among the audience that the words might not be true.

Likewise, the incredibly perfect speeches of many American academics are far from natural. You may end up buying their book on the way out, but soon afterwards, it is much like fast food, and you get a nameless sense that you've been cheated.

Although, as Earl Spencer proved at his sister Princess Diana's funeral, it is possible both to prepare every word and to act naturally. A script rarely works and it is used to help most speakers.

But, being yourself doesn't work either. If you spoke as if you were in your own kitchen, it would be too authentic, too unaware of the need to communicate with an audience.

I remember going to see British psychiatrist R.D. Laing speak in public. He behaved like a seriously odd person, talking off the top of his head. Although he was talking about madness and he wrote on mental illness, he seemed to be exhibiting rather than explaining it.

The best psychological place from which to speak is an unselfconscious self-consciousness, providing the illusion of being natural. Studies suggest that this state of "flow", as psychologists call it, is very satisfying.
1. How do most people fill about speaking in public?
2. What are they most afraid of?
3. What will this kind of situation illuminate?
4. Is it worse for men or women?
5. Is personality a good indicator of who will be good at this?
6. How do politicians prepare?
7. What is the audience aware of?
8. Who is Princess Diana's brother?
9. Did he speak at her funeral?
10. How did he act?
11. How often is a script a good tool?
12. Who is R.D. Laing?
13. from where?
14. Has he spoken in public?
15. What was his topic?
16. What did he write about?
17. Did he do well?
18. How did his behavior seem
19. What state do psychologists say you need to be in?
20. What does this make your speech look like?
Answer: 1. they dread it
2. Humiliation
3. insecurities
4. women
5. no
6. they have scripts
7. it might not be true
8. Earl Spencer
9. yes
10. natural
11. rarely
12. a psychiatrist
13. Great Britain
14. yes
15. madness
16. mental illness
17. no
18. odd
19. state of flow
20. natural

Problem: Case is a special grammatical category of a noun, pronoun, adjective, participle or numeral whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by that word in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in. As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative), a phenomenon formally called syncretism.

English has largely lost its case system, although personal pronouns still have three cases that are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative and genitive cases: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever), objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever) and possessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whosever). Forms such as "I", "he" and "we" are used for the subject ("I kicked the ball"), whereas forms such as "me", "him" and "us" are used for the object ("John kicked me").

Languages such as Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Armenian, Hungarian, Tibetan, Czech, Slovak, Turkish, Tamil, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Basque, Esperanto and the majority of Caucasian languages have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: German and Icelandic have four; Turkish, Latin and Russian each have at least six; Armenian, Czech, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian have seven; Sanskrit has eight; Estonian and Finnish have fifteen, Hungarian has eighteen and Tsez has sixty-four.
1. What is case?
2. Is there a case system in English?
3. Does Esperanto have an extensive case system?
4. Between languages does the number of cases stay the same?
5. How many does German and Icelandic have?
6. What about Turkish, Latin and Russian?
7. What about Tsez?
8. What are forms such as me, him and us used for?
9. What about I, he, and we?
10. How many cases do personal pronouns still have in English?
Answer:
1. a special grammatical category of a noun, pronoun, adjective, participle or numeral whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by that word in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in
2. it has largely lost its case system
3. yes
4. no
5. four
6. they each have at least six
7. sixty-four
8. the object
9. they are used for the subject
10. three