Survey after survey confirms the value of verbal and written communication skills to employers across the board, making the public speaking course potentially the most valuable one you can take during your undergraduate career.

As a student of public speaking, you are joining a very large and venerable club. People have studied public speaking in one form or another for well over two thousand years. Indeed, public speaking may be the single most studied skill in history! Since before the time of Aristotle, the brilliant Greek thinker who laid the groundwork for modern public communication (384–322 B.C.E.), and the Roman statesman and orator Cicero (106–43 B.C.E.), people have used public speaking to explain, persuade, and move others to act.

Martin Luther King Jr. was certainly a member of this ancient club. He was not only one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders, but one of its most gifted public speakers. His “I Have A Dream” speech, delivered during the March on Washington in the waning days of August 1963, awed the huge (250,000-person) crowd rallying for racial equality and economic opportunity, as well as the millions more who watched it on the wavy lines of their black and white television sets. Of every color and creed and from all walks of life, the audience listened raptly as Reverend King, speaking in the cadenced rhythm of the Bible, shared the phrase “I have a dream” in eight successive sentences.

Time has done nothing to diminish the power of King’s speech, which took just seventeen minutes to deliver. The words stir us still, symbolizing not only the struggle for racial justice but the power of speech to move people and change the course of history.

Our own frenzied era of electronic communication has not in any way diminished the need for this singularly effective form of communication, and public speaking remains an indispensable vehicle for the expression of ideas. Whatever people care deeply about, it offers a way to communicate their concerns to others. Indeed, few other activities offer quite the same opportunity to make one’s voice heard.

This guidebook offers the tools you need to create and deliver effective speeches, from presentations made to fellow students, co-workers, or fellow citizens to major addresses. As great an orator as he was, King prepared meticulously for his speeches and often used parts of them repeatedly in different presentations. Here you will discover the basic building blocks of any good speech and acquire the skills to deliver presentations in a variety of specialized contexts—from the college classroom to the civic, business, and professional arenas. You’ll also find proven techniques to build your confidence by overcoming the anxiety associated with public speaking.