CHAPTER 1
PUBLIC SPEAKING: LET’S START SPEAKING NOW
Chapter Objective: This orientation chapter emphasizes the crucial role public speaking plays
in individual lives and in a broader sense, how it can be a positive force in creating societal
change. The classic “process model” of communication is introduced and the affective nature
of communication is discussed. The important principle of feedback and sensitivity to
communication environment is also introduced and sets the stage for later discussion of
audience adaptation across speaking settings. The potential for internal or external
communicative message disruption and distortion from noise is also stressed. The importance
of visual, verbal, and vocal codes in message transmission is also addressed.
To use this chapter most effectively, list several possible introductory speeches. Explain
several personal and civic benefits of taking a public speaking course or seminar. List the four
different types of presentations and a sample topic for each. Identify the main elements of the
basic communication model and explain why understanding this transactional process can lead
to speaking success.
Chapter Outline
I. How public speaking benefits your life
A. Enhancing your personal satisfaction and development
1. Learning to give a good speech brings you personal satisfaction.
2. Once you learn to give effective speeches, you can stop dreading the
possibility that someone will ask you to speak.
3. Being able to speak in public will also give you more control over your
life.
B. Influencing your world
1. Our form of government depends on citizen participation and
opportunities to speak are almost limitless.
2. It’s hard to find a situation that wouldn’t benefit from public speaking.
C. Advancing your career
1. The National Association of Colleges and Employers in 2013 stated that
verbal communication skills were the most important skill in a potential
candidate.
2. Both large corporations and smaller businesses need employees who are
skilled in public speaking.
3. Many organizations have speaker’s bureaus of employees who discuss
their areas of expertise with outside groups.
4. Your chances of needing to speak increase each time you are promoted.
5. To convince you that public speaking will be important in your career,
look for articles written by people in your profession about oral
communication skills.
II. How to select the right speech for the right occasion
A. Informative speeches promote understanding of an idea or convey a body of
related facts.
B. Persuasive speeches seek to influence beliefs, choices, or opinions.
C. Special occasion speeches give a sense of distinction to important events.
III. What public speakers need to know about the communication process
A. The best speakers are those who understand the communication process.
B. Communication is a process in which people share thoughts, ideas, and feelings in
understandable ways.
C. The speaker (sender) and listener (receiver) simultaneously send and receive
verbal and nonverbal messages from each other.
D. A stimulus triggers and directs attention to your topic.
E. Motivation provides a personal benefit that ensures continued audience attention.
F. The process of putting your message into a form that your specific audience will
understand is called encoding.
G. The process of interpreting meaning is called decoding.
H. Encoding and decoding are responsible for many of the misunderstandings that
occur between speakers and listeners. You use your own frame of reference to
encode messages.
I. Messages conveyed to your audience consist of symbols carried by light waves
and sound waves.
1. The verbal code includes spoken and written words.
2. The visual code includes personal appearance, facial expression, eye
contact, and visual aids.
3. The vocal code includes tone, volume, pitch, rate, emphasis, and other
qualities of the voice.
4. Emoticons have been developed to take the place of vocal and visual
codes.
5. When adults attempt to determine the meaning of a statement, they rely
more on vocal and visual cues then they do on the actual words spoken.
6. Too many speakers think the only important codes is the verbal one.
J. Feedback is verbal, visual, or vocal responses to messages.
K. The environment includes the time, place, and physical and social surroundings.
K. Noise is anything that interferes with blocking or distorting the message.
1. External noise includes distractions in the environment, e.g., poor lighting.
2. Internal noise refers to distractions within the listeners, e.g., physical
illness or mental distractions.
3. The effective speaker will plan the presentation to:
a.. Stimulate and motivate listeners.
b. Encode presentations for each audience being aware of frame-of–
reference and cultural differences.
c. Try to make their visual and vocal codes reinforce their verbal
messages.
d. Pay careful attention to audience feedback.
e. Control the speaking environment and noise factors as much as
possible.
Classroom Exercises
Online Activity
If you are teaching this class online, a good way to start the class is to have your students
determine the individual who they feel is the best speaker they’ve heard. If they don’t know
where to start, have them visit The History Channel.com or CNN.com and watch some of the
speeches that are available on these websites. With presidential elections, there are a large
number of political speeches to use as examples as well. They should write a brief paper telling
who the speaker is, the attributes/skills this person has that make them exceptional, and which of
the speaker’s skills the student would like to incorporate into their own public speaking.
Speech Builder Express Activity
Ask your students to log into Speech Builder Express and create a new account. They should
look around and make themselves comfortable with SBE. If you have determined what type of
speech your students will be giving first, have them complete the “Create a New Speech” page.
Active Critical Thinking Activity
To think further about the importance of oral communication, ask students to complete the
following:
1. Check current job ads for engineering and at least two other careers that interest
you personally. How often do you see the requirement “excellent written and oral
communication skills”?
2. Summarize a past opportunity that you missed due to lack of oral communication
skills, and discuss one specific way that public speaking skills will likely benefit
your future life.
To think further about the three types of presentations, ask students to complete the following:
1. List two topics that would make good informative speeches, two topics that would
make good persuasive speeches, and two topics that would be good for special
occasion speeches.
2. Evaluate your list of topics, putting a check by each that is labeled correctly or
rewriting any that seem incorrect.
To think further about the communication process, ask students to select one of the basic
elements of the process summarized in the chapter that gives them the most difficulty and
complete the following:
1. Discuss why the element causes you problems, and give a personal example to
illustrate it.
2. Suggest at least one solution that might solve your problem and how you plan to
use it.
1.1 Proving the Relevance of Oral Communication
Bring the “Help Wanted” ads from several newspapers, Internet classifieds, or your school’s
career center to class. Ask students to scan the ads and note the variety of different
advertisements for jobs that require “excellent communication skills … good people skills,”
“public communication ability,” or other oral communication skills. Discuss exactly which
aspects of the job involve specific communication skills such as accurate information,
persuasion, and sensitivity to feedback.
1.2 Perceiving the Need to Study Communication
Think, Pair, Share Activity: These activities are designed to engage students and help them
with active learning. In think, pair, share the students are given a question to think about for a
few minutes. They are then asked to pair with someone sitting near them and talk about the
question and their feelings about it for a very brief period of time (usually two to three
minutes). Class discussion is then initiated on the questions and the findings of pairs of
students. When students become accustomed to participating in think, pair, share activities in
the classroom, there is usually lively student-initiated discussion.
Ask the class to identify a time when they wished they could have spoken up for themselves or
for a situation when they wanted to respond to someone, but didn’t. Why were they hesitant to
speak their mind? How could communication skills have improved the situation?
After the activity, identify how these specific areas will be addressed in this course and
describe how public speaking skills, including listening, reducing anxiety, and better delivery
will help confidence in speaking, and not only in giving a presentation, but in classrooms,
meetings, or even with friends.
1.3 The Crucial Nature of Feedback
Develop a four or five sentence long “rumor” about some event or occurrence on campus. (Ex.
The President of the university is considering accepting a position at another university, not
because he dislikes the job, but because his wife doesn’t like the town. If he does leave, the
Provost may be the new President). Whisper the “rumor” to the student in the first seat of the
first row. (They may not take notes!) The first student then must “pass along” the message as
accurately as possible to the student behind them. The listener may not ask questions nor take
notes, nor may the message sender repeat any part of the message. The process then continues
all the way around the class. Hilarity usually ensues when the last person attempts to recap a
message that invariably has nothing to do with the original message. This classic exercise
teaches an important message about the crucial nature of feedback, not to mention the potential
inaccuracy of gossip in informal communication networks. This activity is fun for the students
when rumors are created about celebrities or political figures.
1.4 Coping with Communication Breakdown
Assign a pair of students to enact each of the following scenarios:
-An international student needs directions on how to get to this classroom.
-One student is trying to convince another to take a course in public speaking.
1.5 The Role of Communication in Your Career
Have each student describe as specifically as possible what his or her ideal career would be.
1.6 The Role of Communication in Your Life
Have each student keep a “Communication Diary” for one day. In that diary, the student should
1.7 Guest Speakers
Often students understand the value of communication best when they hear it from someone
who is a practitioner. Invite one or more of the following types of people to speak to the class.
Make sure you invite people who are accomplished public speakers so students have models to
emulate.
1.8 Communication Assessment
Often students are not aware of their communication weaknesses until outsiders point out their
strengths or weaknesses. Ask students to survey their friends and family about their
communication strengths and weaknesses. Questions they may ask include:
-How often does it appear that I am not listening to what you are saying? Please
1.9 “Icebreaker” Exercises for the First Class Sessions
Here are a few suggested “icebreaker” activities that will get students up before the class in a
non-threatening way and will help you and your students familiarize themselves with
everybody’s names immediately.
-The “Name game”-This exercise requires every student to think of an alliterative label
to attach to their first name. (The label has to be positive, such as “Lovely LaTasha,” or
“Cool Corey,” rather than “Alcoholic Albert,” or “Low self-image Louise.”) Starting
1.10 More advanced classes may enjoy the challenge of quotation impromptus.
A staple of the collegiate forensics circuit in both the American Forensics Association and the
National Forensics Association, these more involved impromptus are usually seven minutes in
length. I use a condensed three-minute version.
The body will include one or two illustrative examples from different “areas of knowledge” that
illustrate the speaker’s “take” on the quotation. (For example, if the quotation was football coach
Vince Lombardi’s famous assertion that “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing,” and the
This exercise can be intimidating to novices, but if presented the right way is a superb way to
condense much basic speech construction theory into a fun exercise. Students will learn good
ways to begin and conclude a speech, learn the value of basic structure and the import of