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What Public Speaking Has to Offer YouW elcome to public speaking! And welcome to the many benefits this course can offer you. As much as anything else, the ability you cultivate here to communicate in public settings will distinguish you as a competent and well-educated person. What s more, learning to present yourself and your ideas effectively can help prepare you for some of the more important moments in your life: times when you need to speak to protect your family s interests, when your values are threatened by the action or inaction of others, or when you need approval to undertake some important project. Finally, the principles you learn in this class will make you a more astute consumer of public messages. They will help you sort through the barrage of information and misinformation that bombards us on a daily basis. Beyond these vital considerations, the public speaking course offers practical, personal growth and knowledge benefits that can have profound importance throughout your life. Public Speaking, Eighth Edition, by Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn and Randall Osborn. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter 1 Public Speaking and You 5 Practical Benefits The public speaking course offers three practical benefits of fundamental importance. You will develop an array of basic skills. You will become a more successful person. And you will become a better citizen. You Will Develop an Array of Basic Skills. The chapter titles in this book reflect this extensive range of skills: I Learning how to control your communication anxiety in public settings. I Learning how to present your best side in the impressions you make on others. I Learning how to listen effectively and constructively. I Learning how to read an audience and to adapt your messages accordingly. I Learning how to develop ethical sensitivity for what speeches can do both for and to listeners. I Learning how to select subjects that listeners will find vital and fascinating. I Learning how to conduct research that produces responsible knowledge. I Learning how to design, structure, and outline messages that accomplish the goals of communication. I Learning how to support your points with well-selected data, testimony, examples, and stories. I Learning how to use presentation aids that make your speeches clear and striking. I Learning how to manage language so that your words work for rather than against your message. I Learning how to express your ideas before audiences with power, confidence, and conviction. I Learning the special skills of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Will you become an expert in all thirteen of these fundamental skills over the course of a semester? Probably not. But if you take this course seriously and invest your time and energy in it, you should advance in your knowledge of many of them, perhaps strikingly in some of them. And in the process, you will be growing as a person as well as developing abilities that will serve you throughout your life. You Will Become a More Successful Person. Developing the kinds of basic skills we have just described will help you succeed both in school and in your later professional life. Each year, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) surveys hundreds of corporate recruiting specialists. According to the organization, Employers responding to NACE s Job Outlook 2007 survey named communication skills and honesty/integrity as a job seeker s most important skills and qualities. Communication skills have topped the list for eight years. NACE advises: Learn to speak clearly, confidently, and concisely. 1 Ask students to describe situations in which they might exercise public speaking skills. Have them set at least three selfimprovement goals that might help them function more effectively in these situations. Public Speaking, Eighth Edition, by Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn and Randall Osborn. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. 6 Part One The Foundations of Public Speaking You Will Become a Better Citizen. As social creatures, all of us feel compelled to speak out in defense of our vital interests and core values from time to time. Developing your public speaking skills will equip you to more effectively and more ethically do just that. For instance, you might find yourself wanting to speak at a school board meeting about a proposal to remove controversial books such as The Catcher in the Rye, the Harry Potter series, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from your local school, or you may wish to speak for or against attempts to rezone your neighborhood at a city council meeting. On campus, you might find yourself speaking for or against attempts to alter your college s affirmative action policy, the firing of a popular but unorthodox professor, or allowing religious groups to stage protests and distribute literature on school grounds. In your class, you might speak for or against stronger immigration laws, the policy of preemptive warfare as it relates to the war on terror, allowing gay people to marry or serve openly in the military, and even whether notorious hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan should be allowed to stage public rallies. As you take part in such controversies, both speaking and listening, you will be enacting the role envisioned for you as a citizen by those who framed the Constitution of the United States: Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (First Amendment to the Bill of Rights) The political system of the United States is built on faith in open and robust public communication. If we citizens are the repositories of political power, then our understanding must be nourished constantly by a full and free flow of information and exchange of opinions so that we can make good and wise decisions on such matters as who should lead us and which public policies we should endorse. ESL: Ask ESL students how they would define success for themselves in this course. Discuss how their goals might differ from those of native speakers in the class. Discuss what personal and social benefits may be lost in societies that do not encourage the free and open exchange of ideas. Have ESL students discuss this topic in relation to their own culture. The skills you learn in your public speaking class can help you in many ways. Learning to present yourself well can be an asset in job interviews. Paul Baruda, who serves as an employment expert for the jobs site Monster.com, agrees that articulating thoughts clearly and concisely will make a difference in both a job interview and subsequent job performance. The point is, you can be the best physicist in the world, but if you can t tell people what you do or communicate it to your co-workers, what good is all of that knowledge? I can t think of an occupation, short of living in a cave, where being able to say what you think cogently at some point in your life isn t going to be important.2 So unless you plan to live in a cave, what you learn in this course can be absolutely vital to your success in life. Public Speaking, Eighth Edition, by Michael Osborn, Suzanne Osborn and Randall Osborn. Published by Allyn & Bacon. Copyright © 2007 by Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter 1 Public Speaking and You 7 Public speaking classes therefore become laboratories for the democratic process.3 Crafting, presenting, and listening to speeches even classroom speeches is a valuable way to develop your citizenship skills. Preparation for your role as citizen is a benefit that serves not just you but the society in which you live. Personal Growth Benefits Some benefits of this course are invisible but nevertheless can be vital to the quality of your life. Such benefits include learning more about yourself, becoming acquainted with the intellectual tradition of public speaking, and expanding your cultural horizons. Learning More about Yourself. In a very real sense, we are the sum of our communication experiences with other people. As you put together speeches on topics that you care about, you will explore your own interests and values, expand your base of knowledge, and develop your skills of creative expression. In short, you will develop your own voice as a unique individual. Speaker s Notes 1.1 Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1452
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