Public Speaking instruction for beginners

Last year, my department was newly tasked with instructing the dreaded COMM_ST 102: Public Speaking, which had previously been taught by students of rhetoric, whose academic backgrounds center squarely on the use of written and spoken language, and the meaning derived from them. Students in my program often don't have this qualitative background; instead, they were brought up on lab experiments and computational tools, and often have never even taken a public speaking course themselves. Soon teaching this course for third time, I will offer some tips and tricks that have helped me make the most of (and even enjoy) this assignment.

1. Know your audience.

Just as the instructor teaches their students before they give their speech, it helps the instructor to know who they're teaching. In many cases, including mine, students from other departments across campus (especially in STEM) are required to take a public speaking course. Think about why: they are made to enroll to build their competencies, not to learn all rhetoric theory and history. Teaching public speaking became less daunting for me as soon as I dropped lecture material on technical rhetoric, which I never had a grasp on to begin with.

2. Orient toward in-class exercises and away from heavy lecture.

The way to gain competency is not just to learn, but to practice, practice, practice. It's of course beneficial to lecture on the necessities: speech structuring and setup, message and communicator factors that improve audience reception, even expectations for assignments. However, I keep these lectures to 20-30 minutes (our sections are each 1 hour 50 minutes) and then fill the rest of class with individual and group speaking exercises/games (generally two per class period). I use live feedback during in-class activities to reinforce what we've learned earlier in class, and to affirm students' individual speaking progress. This tends to give student a working expectation of which speaking skills they need to improve (i.e., speaking louder, having better control of nonverbal disfluencies), as well as the opportunity to learn from and connect with their classmates.

3. Random generators are your friend!

Speaking of in-class activities, I swear by a sort of random-random-generator method. Teaching nonverbals? Generate random paragraphs that students must deliver in random tones. Teaching persuasion? Randomly generate a weird or confusing product students have to individually sell. Teaching storytelling? Have groups tell a story about a randomly generated character with a randomly generated goals and conflicts. If you can imagine it, there's a random generator for it. The randomness not only eases the burden of creating class activities, but also gives each class a healthy dose of improvisation - a social muscle that must be worked.

4. Approach a "banned topics" list cautiously.

For some public speaking instructors, it might seem easiest to be upfront with students about topics they must avoid (usually around touchy and overused topics). Most students won't care, but some may react negatively to a ban list (pesky psychological reactance!). My approach to choosing topics is that the topic must be (1) relevant and interesting to the speaker, (2) delivered in an innovative way, and (3) be able to change attitudes. This last part is especially important: for highly divisive topics that are entrenched in public discourse, attitudes are nearly impossible to sway. In other words, the speaker is either preaching to the choir, or to an audience that will simply not listen. I encourage students to instead think about unique topics that the audience (their classmates) will likely not have opinions on - this is where the greatest potential for influence lies.

5. Work to build community within the classroom.

There's no single way to establish classroom culture; it's something that must be reinforced every single class period, in all email correspondence between instructor and students, and even in the details on the course syllabus and website. I aim to create this space for my students and myself by doing several things. First and foremost, I get to know my students - their names, their majors, where they're from, extracurriculars they participate in, and things that interest them. This info is particularly useful when students encounter creative blocks for choosing speech topics (some of the most memorable speeches were about cultural upbringings), but also makes students feel seen. Every class period starts with a check-in question to get a pulse on the semester (is midterm season stressing everyone out?), as well as a question that tells me more about each student.

Second, I reinforce that the classroom is a safe place to be ourselves. Beyond following the basic etiquette of respecting social and cultural differences, students do an exercise of answering deep questions about themselves (Aron's questions for connectedness), and by sharing the most embarrassing story they are willing to. Based in psychology and practiced in the workplace, this vulnerability opens the door to in-class authenticity, trust, and creativity.

Third, I connect students to resources and others when possible. I can't stress enough how much socialization and education complement each other; the undergrad experience should lead to both academic and personal growth. Public speaking, by its very nature, is a very social endeavor, so a public speaking class can be optimal, despite that it is more feared by Americans than death itself. Now come on... On top of encouraging students to use their uniqueness to their advantage throughout the course, I also do my best to draw connections between students' interests and goals. To summarize this point, and the abovementioned, I'll leave you with part of a student's evaluation of my course:

"[Chris] also took the time to get to know us and to let us get to know one another and so I actually became good friends with a number of students. The chemistry and energy we had made it less taxing to stand in front of the class while doing spontaneous in-class activities. I was less worried about embarrassing myself and got a good laugh out of some ridiculous things we did. We really let our creativity loose in this class which I really enjoyed."

I hope these tips are useful as you design your first public speaking course. Teaching it may seem daunting now, but I promise it'll be a worthwhile experience in the end. Here's my Winter 2022 course syllabus. Please reach out if you have any questions or fears you'd like to express (dobmeier@u.northwestern.edu).