I'm always nervous before an oral presentation, but it's not that bad once I start talking. And this is coming from someone who used to have BIG issues with public speaking. I still have trouble if I have to do it on the fly, but if I'm prepared it's tolerable. I would say what helped me the most are the following two things: * Know your topic inside and out. This is important because even if you have a structured speech and you feel something will be hard to say, then you will know the topic so well that you will find alternate ways to say the same thing. The risk of this happening can be reduced by spending more time on the next point. * If you know certain words (or sentences) will be difficult to say, look up synonyms or try to come up with different and easier sentences that gets the same point across.