Part 1: SPEAKER’S REFERENCE
GETTING STARTED WITH CONFIDENCE
SPEAKER’S REFERENCE
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Recognize the Many Benefits of Public Speaking
- Gain real-life skills that lead to greater confidence and satisfaction.
- Advance your professional goals.
- Oral and written communication are most important skills employers look for in a college graduate.
Enhance Your Career as a Student
- Hone your researching, writing and outlining, reasoning, critical thinking, and listening skills.
- Deliver better oral presentations in other courses, including speaking in science and mathematics, technical, social science, arts and humanities, education, nursing and allied health, and business courses.
Find New Opportunities for Civic Engagement
- Use public speaking to become more involved in addressing issues you care about.
- Become a more active participant in our democracy.
- Learn the rules of engagement for effective and ethical public discourse.
Recognize the Classical Roots of Public Speaking
- Rhetoric first flourished in the Greek city-state of Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. and referred to making effective speeches, particularly those of a persuasive nature.
- Public speaking played a central role in the development of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome and remains an essential tool in safeguarding democracy today.
- The ancient Greek agora and the Roman forum exist today as physical spaces, such as town halls as well as virtual forums streamed to listeners online.
- The canons of rhetoric, a five-part speechmaking process developed in ancient Greece, remain relevant for today’s public speaker
Draw on the Familiar Skills of Conversation and Composition
- Consider that in both conversation and writing, you try to uncover the audience’s interests and needs before speaking.
- Consider that in both conversation and writing, you check to make certain that you are understood, and adjust your speech to the listeners and to the occasion.
- Much of what you’ve learned about organizing written papers can be applied to organizing your speeches.
Recognize Unique Aspects of Public Speaking
- More so than writers, successful speakers generally use familiar words, easy-to-follow sentences, and transitional words and phrases.
- Spoken language is often more interactive and inclusive of the audience than written language.
Become an Inclusive Speaker
- Try to identify and respectfully address the diversity of values and viewpoints held by audience members.
- Work toward making every member of the audience feel recognized and included in your message.
Recognize Public Speaking as a Category of Communication
- As in conversation (dyadic communication), you attempt to make yourself understood, involve and respond to your conversational partner, and take responsibility for what you say.
- As in small group communication, you address a group of people who are focused on you and expect you to clearly discuss issues that are relevant to the topic and to the occasion.
- As in mass communication, you address a group with whom you have little or no interaction, as on television and radio.
- In public speaking, a speaker delivers a message with a specific purpose to an audience of people who are present during the delivery of the speech.
Recognize That Public Speaking Is an Interactive Communication Process
- Understand elements of source, receiver, message, and channel and how they interact in public speaking.
- Understand and plan for the rhetorical situation—the circumstance that calls for a public response (the speech).
Recognize the Similarities and Differences between Public Speaking and the Other Forms of Communication
- Opportunities for feedback are fewer than in conversation or in small group communication, and greater than in mass communication.
- Preparation required is greater than in other forms of communication.
- The degree of formality tends to be greater than in other forms of communication.
Use This Overview to Construct and Deliver Your First Speech
- Analyze the audience.
- Select a topic.
- Determine the speech purpose.
- Compose a thesis statement.
- Develop the main points.
- Gather supporting material.
- Separate the speech into its major parts: introduction, body, and conclusion.
- Outline the speech using coordinate and subordinate points.
- Consider presentation aids.
- Practice delivering the speech.
KEY TERMS
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context |
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organizational pattern |
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