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ACTIVITY 12.3 COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING
Purpose: This activity teaches students how to restructure negative self-talk into
positive self-talk in an effort to help them manage the natural apprehension associated
with presenting.
Debriefing: List on the board some key examples from students’ discussions. Use the
debriefing as an opportunity to introduce the concept of Cognitive Restructuring, or
learning to think differently about our “triggers” for anxiety. By reframing concerns (i.e.,
PUBLIC SPEAKING ANXIETY WORKSHEET
This activity asks you to think about what makes you most nervous about public speaking. All
of us have natural anxiety over speaking. Such anxiety is often triggered by negative “visions”
of things that will happen while we speak. In this activity you will make a list of potential
Concerns:
You list various things that cause you
anxiety about public speaking. Try to be as
specific and concrete as possible.
Strategies:
As a group, talk about various concerns
people have and discuss strategies for
alleviating (or even eliminating) those
concerns.
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ACTIVITY 12.4 AN IMPROMPTU SPEECH WITH EMPHASIS ON DELIVERY
Purpose: Students should be able to illustrate how gestures can enhance speaking
effectiveness.
Procedure: Divide the class in half and hold a round of charades. For this activity, it
would probably be best to use topics that have previously been presented in class.
Although charades may be popular, the instructor might need to explain the “rules”
associated with the activity. As an incentive, extra credit points or some “prize” might be
offered to the winning team.
Debriefing: This activity provides students with practice in gesturing. All too often,
students fail to recognize that gestures can aid in achieving speaking effectiveness. If
used naturally and effectively, gestures help in getting a message across to the
audience.
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ACTIVITY 12.5 BAGGING APPREHENSION
Purpose: Students should be able to begin work on communication apprehension they
may experience in public speaking situations.
Procedure: The instructor should bring in a bag or box of items to be used for
impromptu speaking with an equal number of items and students. The instructor should
number the items, and prior to getting up to speak, students should state a number. The
instructor should then give the student the item that corresponds to the number the
Debriefing: This activity encourages students to disclose their feelings about
anticipated public speaking situations that might cause anxiety, at least in their minds.
Students need to talk about their feelings toward public speaking, since it is a new
experience for some and a threatening one for others. It also allows for an avenue of
discussion about ways to cope with hidden fears.
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ACTIVITY 12.6 OBSERVING VOCAL ASPECTS OF DELIVERY
Purpose: Students should be able to critically evaluate a speaker’s vocal aspects of
delivery.
Procedure: Play a tape-recorded speech of a student speaker or some other speaker.
Tell the students to listen carefully and to take notes on the speaker’s pitch, rate,
pauses, volume, enunciation, fluency, and vocal variety.
Debriefing: This activity provides the students with practice in focusing on vocal
aspects of speech delivery. Recognition of effective and ineffective vocal delivery
should encourage students to practice their informative and persuasive speeches with
the vocal aspects of delivery in mind.
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ACTIVITY 12.7 POTERY IN MOTION
Purpose: Students should be able to utilize techniques of effective vocal delivery to
improve their public speaking.
Procedure: Provide students with a copy of a poem or a short story. (For an interesting
selection of literature, see works by Gwendolyn Brooks, E. E. Cummings, W. H. Auden,
Ray Bradbury, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, or Anne Sexton.) Volunteer students
Debriefing: Students will have a better understanding of how to incorporate effective
vocal cues into their speeches. Literature serves a valuable role in facilitating the
various levels of vocal effectiveness.
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ACTIVITY 12.8 OBSERVING BODILY ASPECTS OF DELIVERY
Purpose: Students should be able to critically evaluate a speaker’s bodily aspects of
delivery.
Procedure: Have the students watch a videotape of a student speaker or some other
speaker. Turn off the sound for part of the exercise so that students can concentrate on
what the speaker is doing with his or her body. Tell the students to take notes on the
Debriefing: This activity provides the students with practice in focusing on bodily
aspects of speech delivery. Recognition of effective and ineffective bodily delivery
should encourage students to practice their informative and persuasive speeches with
the bodily aspects of speech delivery in mind.
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ACTIVITY 12.9 INTRODUCING ANOTHER
Purpose: The objective of this exercise is to provide an early opportunity under non–
threatening conditions to meet a classmate and to introduce that classmate to the
audience. The audience can be instructed to take notes on this presentation as a first
step in audience analysis. This exercise does not need to count, or it can count for very
little so students don’t perceive the assignment as fear-inducing.
Procedure: In pairs, have students discover and write down information about the other
person for the purpose of reporting that information to the class in the form of an
introduction. The minimum requirements of the assignment are (1) to write the name of
introduction with some kind of transition such as “And now I present you with our
speaker for the day, Amanda Schmertz.” On this early assignment, you may allow
students to use notes but to practice as much eye contact as they can muster.
You can furnish the students with an example like this one:
Good afternoon class. My name is Rachel Goodman, and I am here today to
introduce our speaker, Jerrod Timkin, another member of our public speaking
class.
To save time, you might want the person who was just introduced to go ahead and
introduce the other student.
Debriefing: Introducing another person provides a brief public speaking opportunity
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ACTIVITY 12.10 PERSONAL GOALS FOR THE COURSE
Purpose: The objective of this exercise is to invite students to set some goals to
achieve during the course. In particular this exercise encourages them to think of times,
places, and topics when they felt they should speak out, but did not.
Procedure: In class or between class sessions have students list some times in the
past year when they avoided speaking out about a topic about which they had strong
feelings.
Debriefing: After the students have completed their lists, the teacher can ask for
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Mini Prezi COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING AND PUBLIC SPEAKING
ANXIETY
Objective: This presentation helps students consider how to apply the steps of
cognitive restructuring to their own public speaking fears as a way to begin to overcome
them
Procedure: The mini prezi presentation can be accessed through the following website
link (http://tinyurl.com/crestructure). Listed below is possible presentation information
that can be used to explain each click through the presentation.
Presentation Script Information:
Introduction:
• It is natural to experience some degree of public speaking anxiety before giving a speech. The key is
to learn strategies for keeping those feelings in check. In fact, a certain amount of anxiety can actually
help you in delivering your speech.
Step 1: Create a Negative Self-Talk List
• The first step of the cognitive restructuring approach is to create a negative self-talk list. [click]
• Spend time writing down some of the things that make you most nervous about giving a speech.
Step 2: Identify the Unrealistic or Overly Negative Assumption in the Statement
• After identifying your fears, the next step is to spend some time analyzing each negative statement.
Identify an unrealistic or overly negative assumption that you are making when thinking about each
fear. The key to this step is to spend as much time analyzing your fears as you have done worrying
about them in the first place. [click]
Step 3: Develop a Coping Statement
• The third step is to develop a coping statement that can be useful for balancing out negative self-talk
when it occurs. [click]
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Step 4: Practice the Coping Statements
• In the final step, you will focus on making your coping statements second nature by practicing them.
[click]
• Practicing coping statements is necessary to retraining the brain. When you focus more energy on
something that you can do to combat public speaking anxiety, the fears start to dissipate and hold
less power to cripple you during a speech. [click]
Conclusion:
• Implementing the four simple steps of cognitive restructuring provides you one tool for increasing your
Debriefing: Following the presentation, you might have students apply the steps
outlined to their own fears, as a strategy to help them begin to restructure how they are
thinking about their own public speaking fears and anxieties.