Public Speaking

Learn to Speak Well in Public

Online course for speakers, teachers, politicians, media presenters, leaders or anyone who wants to improve their skills and confidence in public speaking.

Public speaking is not a skill that comes naturally to many people. Enhancing your public speaking skills can help you build your confidence and deliver presentations that will help you get your message across to your audience.

This course will help you improve your public speaking skills and keep your audience engaged. Public speaking skills are used when you are a teacher, coach, presenting meetings, broadcast media, in celebrations, religious services or many other events.

You will learn speaking, presenting and delivering skills and the end of this course will culminate in you preparing and delivering a speech.

Lesson Structure

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1. Scope and nature of public speaking
   • The nature of public speaking
   • The scope of public speaking
   • Context influence the nature and scope of speaking
   • Critical factors in public speaking
   • The ultimate message
   • Speaker/listener relationship
   • Channel
   • Feedback
   • Interference
2. Writing and preparing speech
   • Words! Words! Words!
   • Clarity and confusion
   • Reorganising words leads to different results
   • Questions
   • Rhetoric and rhetorical devices
   • Speech preparation
   • Speech organisation
   • Outline
   • Purpose
   • Subject statement
   • Development
   • Sample outline
   • Other important factors to consider
   • Attention
   • Transitions
   • Orientation
   • Conclusion and summary
3. Presentation and delivery
   • A speech
   • Volume, pitch, tone
   • Projection (volume)
   • Voice
   • Vocal health
   • Dealing with nerves
   • Body language
   • How to present a speech
   • Visual aid and media
   • Types of visual aids
   • Reasons for and against the use visual aids and media
   • For visual aids and media
   • Against visual aids and media
4. Toasts and entertainment
   • Speaking for entertainment and toasting
   • Toasts
   • Content and focus
   • Timing
   • Humour
   • Body language
   • Voice
   • Master of ceremonies (MC)
   • Focus
   • Paying attention to the audience
   • Use of humour
   • Voice and body language
   • Story, script, and narrative
   • Preparation
   • Vocal technique
   • Adding character
   • Body language
   • Types of speeches
   • Introductions
5. Debate and presenting argument
   • Introduction
   • What is rhetoric?
   • Ethos, pathos, and logos
   • Ethos: persuasion by character
   • Pathos: persuasion by emotion
   • Logos: persuasion by reason or logic
   • Persuasive context
   • Rhetorical triangle
   • Constructing an argument for speech or debate
   • Logic, fact and fallacy
   • Constructing an argument
   • What is a logical fallacy?
   • Critical thinking
   • Persuasive speaking
6. Lecture and informative speech
   • Know your subject
   • Fact check
   • Questions and answers
   • Use elements from other areas of public speaking
   • Important points about fact-based presentations and educational presentations
   • Structuring a lecture or informative presentation
   • General educational lecture
   • The socratic method
   • Hands-on lectures: practicals, activities, and exercises
   • The role of vulnerability
7. Evaluating a speech
   • Evaluating a speech
   • Introduction
   • Quality and evaluation
   • Anonymous or not?
   • Feedback
   • Ways to examine the quality of a speech/ speaker
   • Evaluating a toast or entertainment speech:
   • Evaluating a debate or argument:
   • Evaluating a lecture or informative speech:
   • Regaining confidence after a poor speech
8. Question speaking for broadcast media
   • Introduction
   • Broadcasts
   • Rhythm of speaking
   • Slang and colloquial speech
   • Filler words
   • Developing a speech for broadcast media
   • Radio and podcast or sound recordings
   • Sound recordings
   • Television and film presentation
   • Media interviews and speaking on panels
9. Project: prepare and deliver a speech
   • Why is problem based learning important?
   • Project aim
   • Learning outcomes
   • Problem definition
   • Your speech
   • Discussion questions
   • Team structure and mode of interaction
   • Final pbl submission

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Explain the scope and nature of public speaking and recognise the different contexts in which speeches are delivered.
• Explain how word choice, speech organisation and preparation combine to influence the impact of a speech.
• Examine the delivery and presentation of a speech.
• Structure and examine quality of toasts and entertaining speaking.
• Examine, construct, and discuss quality of argument and debate.
• Construct and examine quality of lecture and informative speaking.
• Analyse the elements and techniques used to evaluate a speech and gather feedback from the audience.
• Explain key elements of preparing and delivering speech on broadcast media.
• Conduct a speech and evaluate the audience response.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO USE PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS?

This course can help you in any of the following - and more!

• Public speaking is used in many different ways and by many different people. It can be a way to educate, persuade or entertain.  The way in which public speaking is carried out will vary according to the purpose of the speech.  The ways in which public speaking is used is potentially limitless. Some examples include:
  
  
• Teaching – teaching students is public speaking. This can be carried out in a classroom or lecture room, talking to a group of students.  It can also be online via technology. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a rapid increase in teaching being offered online in many countries around the world.  But online teaching has been around for longer than this. 
  -Online teaching can be live (in real time). The student talking into a camera, whilst students watch elsewhere on their computer or device.
  -Teachers might record their lesson, or sections of their lesson, and the student can watch at an appointed time or at their leisure.
  -A teacher might use videos of public speaking from others as part of their lessons.
  -Webinars and seminars offer students training via presentations from educators.
  
  
• Education is not just about teaching students though.  Education is the process of giving or receiving instruction, information, knowledge, and theories.  People may choose to watch talks or speeches about interesting topics. A person interested in archaeology might spend time watching speeches or talks by archaeologists.  The person may not consider this to be “educating” themselves, but it is. They are gaining knowledge and information. 
  
  
• Training also comes under education.  Businesses, in the past, may have trained their staff “on the job” or may have sent them to training courses. Today, they might undergo some training online.  Training is also, of course, public speaking. The trainer is again imparting knowledge and skills to the students there.
  
  
• Funerals, Weddings– Public speaking often happens at weddings, funerals and other celebratory or solemn events.  This public speaking may be carried out by a religious person, an organised speaker or informally by people there. For example, at a funeral, someone may come to talk about the person, give a speech about them and their life. Their family or friends or colleagues may also talk about the person or read a short poem and so on.  The type of public speaking carried out at a funeral often varies due to religious beliefs. The same applies at weddings.  Speeches may be carried out to celebrate the couple and their special day. Celebrations at the birth of a baby also often have public speaking.
  
  
• Religious – Many of the above will also tie into religious public speaking. Depending on a person’s religion, rabbis, imams, priests, vicars, pastors etc may give a public speech about a person who has been born, married, passed away and so on.  Religious public speaking is not just tied to solemn and celebratory events, people may attend religious ceremonies regularly as part of their faith. Their religious leader and others involved in the religion may talk to the people attending.  Religion is not just in a house of worship. Television services have been common for years and now online religious meetings are carried out more and more.
  
  
• Business – Public speaking is used in many different ways in business. 
  -A businessperson may visit another organisation or company and do a presentation to their staff to try and sell a product or goods or services.
  -They may do presentations online to people on the other side of the world or elsewhere in their own country.
  -They may do seminars or webinars as a means of promoting their products.  
  -Some businesses may offer training in their products as a way to encourage others to use or buy their products
  -Meetings with staff in an organisation
  -Training of staff in an organisation
  -Conferences and Seminars
  
  
• Marketing and Advertising can be tied to business and includes public speaking.  This may include a sales meeting with another organisation, a presentation about a product, an advertisement or advertorial (an advertisement about a product but given in the form of an editorial) about the products.  Advertising has also become more sophisticated in recent years. So public speaking can be used in other ways. For example, social media influencers may talk about a product on their social media page.  
  
  
• Social media influencers – Social media influences may write about something, but they also often do videos about products or services they wish to promote. An influencer might do a short video wearing a dress from a company they are trying to promote or riding a bicycle they are trying to promote.  People can be filmed opening the box of a new product, for example a games controller or doll and accessories, showing people what the box looks like, what is inside, what they can do with it, how they can set it up and so on. All the time, talking about what they are doing, which is again – public speaking.
  
  
• Politics – Politicians are famous for public speaking. Some are better than others. Good public speakers can change the world (for good or worse), as we have seen with people such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, JF Kennedy, and others.  Politicians may have to speak publicly to the public, their supporters, the press, the news media and more.  They may be interviewed, attend debates, give speeches, speak when meeting other politicians and people in government.
  
  
• Broadcast and other media – TV, radio, online channels and other media make use of public speaking on a daily basis. If people did not talk, there would only be music on the radio probably.  Every day, we can watch people on TV (or other media) and watch fictional programmes, documentaries, the news, films and so on. All involve public speaking. Documentaries about life on our planet, space, history, science and much more involve experts or voice actors talking about important and interesting topics. These can be aimed at adults, children or a mixture of both.  Children’s television programmes could also include adults reading a story to a child or introducing topics that may be relevant to younger viewers.  
  
  
• News – We touched on the news a moment ago. The news can be read in a newspaper or online, but it can also be watched or listened to. Today, we often have 24-hour news coverage and news channels. This involves virtually constant public speaking from the news presenter, other presenters, interviewers, interviewees and others.
  
  
• Community Events – Public speaking can also be carried out at community events. For example, a library may offer a talk about local history or starting to use email. A gardening group may do a talk and show of the gardens they have developed. A park ranger may give a talk about the wildlife in the park around them.  A police officer may give a talk to school children about road safety.  
  
  Tourism/ Tour guiding and much more