Public Speaking

Syllabus

Trying to inspire your team? Nail a job interview? Rock a holiday toast? Deliver a TED Talk to an audience of 400? Negotiate for a better grade? In this course you will build communications skills towards any or all of these contexts. An effective public speaker knows how to tailor their topic and purpose to engage a target audience.

Together we will examine how admired public figures present effective speeches. You will learn to research, organize, outline, and deliver original speeches for a variety of purposes. It is my hope that you will leave this class as better speakers, listeners, and critics of public communication.

As with any activity that deals with students' personal opinions, the bedrock of this course is respect. It is essential that all students learn how to interact with ideas and opinions that both align with and run counter to their own, both in remaining sensitive to what their peers believe and express and, after they graduate, for being able to participate in an adult society with a vast range of perspectives.

Assessments

The class activities will focus on two aspects of speech: examining others' speeches and crafting and delivering original ones. The first quarter tends to focus more on analysis and the second quarter more on delivery. The quantity of activities we complete is based, in part, on the amount of students in the class.

POSSIBLE SPEECH TOPICS

  • Personal Speech

  • Informational Speech

  • Persuasive Speech

  • Social Speech

  • Special Occasion Speech

  • Impromptu Speech

Please review the Gradebook Categories (which supersedes the info in the Policies doc) and the Speech Routines below.

  1. Topic Introduction and discussion

  2. Prep time

  3. Outline completion

  4. Full text of speech uploaded to Classroom and TurnItIn

  5. Presentation

  6. Peer Feedback (TBD in class)

  7. Reflection

FINAL AVERAGE WEIGHTING

1 st Q (44%) + 2nd Q (44%) + FE (12%)

FINAL EXAM EXEMPTION

If your semester average (Q1 + Q2 / 2) is a 90.00% or higher, you may choose to not take the final exam. I will let you know who is possibly eligible sometime in the last few weeks of the semester.

Calendar