If you were really serious about presentation skills and wanting to speak in public then your best route would be to join a local Toastmaster's group combined with presentations skills workshops in your area, whether in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town or Pretoria. Start off small, learn about all of the essential techniques you will need, and practise, practise, practise. If you have never spoken in public before, no one would expect you to stand up before an audience, however large or small, and deliver a major speech. Effective public speaking take years of practice and honing, and would almost certainly start off in the debating club of your high school, or even as an ice-breaking session in primary school when you had to tell the rest of the class who you were. This brings us to one of the most vital and specific presentation skills to know about. Inflection. But what exactly is inflection? Inflection is best described as how the voice is modulated to give meaning to a particular sentence, and it is essential that during an effective speech or presentation you make good use of inflection. Consider a simple sentence such as "What did she do?" Say the sentence to yourself, first putting emphasis on the first word. Then say it again raising the pitch of your voice on the second word, then the third and finally the last word. The amazing thing is that each time the meaning of the sentence change dramatically. No wonder we have daily misunderstandings, not to even talk about the need to improve presentation skills.