Speak So Your Students Can Speak
by Stephen D. Boyd, Ph.D., CSP
One of the most important skills a person can develop for success in a career is to speak well publicly. As an educator, you have a variety of ways of teaching this life skill, no matter what your subject matter or expertise.
Of primary importance is for you to be a good role model as a speaker in class. Show excitement in your delivery style, avoid distracting mannerisms, be well-organized with your content, and develop interesting and related stories and case studies. If you use visuals, make sure they add to your lecture or class discussion. Simply watching a good speaker deliver a presentation can help a person improve his or her own skills.
When possible, mention the value of public speaking when a related current event occurs or when public speaking is connected with the content of your course. For example, presidential debates are a natural segue into discussing the value of public speaking. Any national crisis usually has a spokesperson who does a good or bad job of speaking, providing a good topic for discussion. Consider in the aftermath of 9/11 the speaking of Rudy Giuliani which catapulted him into the national limelight. When you invite guest speakers to talk to your class, choose those who speak well. This allows you to highlight speaking skills as well as content in class discussion following the presentation.
Include assignments in your class which involve speaking in front of the class. When returning essays, students who fulfilled the assignment well can read aloud excerpts from their papers. Over the course of a semester, you can probably include each student at least once in reading a portion of his or her essay.
Have at least one assignment that is oral, and include in the assignment basic traits of good public speaking that you will consider when the person gives the report. When you give written feedback on the report, include comments about the student’s speaking skills. Calling the assignment a “speech” might intimidate the students, but you can still evaluate from the standpoint of effective speaking. In your evaluation rubric, you can include criteria such as an attention device in the opening, a clear thesis statement, gestures that describe and reinforce, eye contact, and vocal emphasis on key points. The report should also include a summary of the material.
When conducting class discussions over content, encourage students to use deductive reasoning when answering questions. That involves giving your reason first, and then offering evidence for your point, as in delivering points and support in a speech. This encourages students to develop habits and skills in informal class interaction that can translate into good public speaking habits.
When a student does a good job of practicing a public speaking skill, call attention to it and reinforce how well the student did. For example, if a student begins his or her response to a question with a startling statement, make note that that is also a good way to begin a speech.
In fact, you can model these kinds of skills in a variety of ways. Begin your class with an attention-getting device each day. That might be a startling statement, or statistic, or a recent current event that relates to your discussion that day. I remember one semester where I made a goal to start each 8:00 a.m. class with a joke. Although the students did not always laugh, they seemed to look forward to the joke. I even received comments on student evaluations at the end of the semester that they appreciated the efforts at humor.
When you use visuals such as PowerPoint, objects, or dry boards, be careful to use good criteria for handling visuals. Remember to use, for example, the “6 by 6 rule” on slides and dry board—no more than six words on a line and six lines on a slide. Look at the audience, not at the visual aid. Always say more than you show. Hold or place the visual where all students can see them easily. Conceal the visuals before and after use.
At the beginning of the semester, mention that you work hard to make your visuals audience-friendly; share some of the principles just mentioned and encourage them to help you maintain high standards in using visuals.
In class discussions, incorporate a variety of types of classroom activities which reinforce public speaking principles. For example, role-plays allow you to talk about and emphasize vocal variety and facial expression to illustrate various feelings and emotions.
I sometimes use a role-play between manager and employee as we discuss listening skills in the workplace. I stress that the role-play requires the employee to sound anxious about getting help from the manager while the manager shows indifference to the person’s request. When we have discussion after the role-play, we discuss how the students fulfilled these roles in demonstrating poor speaking and listening habits. That allows us to talk about vocal variety and facial expression in communicating.
When you have a group project assignment, the culminating activity can be a group report before the class. This allows you to stress criteria for good group presentations, such as having a segue between each speaker and each speaker previewing what the next speaker is going to discuss. Their ending report should be the strongest because people remember best what you say last. You can also touch on moderator or emcee skills when processing a group presentation format.
Remember these ways of teaching public speaking skills while covering any subject—from accounting to agriculture, from computer to culinary skills. You don’t have to say, “We are going to include a unit in public speaking.” You can teach your subject matter while students develop a variety of presentation skills.
Speaking well in public is an important life-long skill. As Daniel Webster, one of America’s greatest speakers, said: “If all of my skills were taken away from me but one, the one I’d want to retain is the ability to speak, for with it I could regain all the rest.”