Public Speaking

-A Saylor Academy course

Name : Darshana Dattu Londhe
Class: TYBcom Div: A
College: RA Podar College of
Commerce and Economics
Roll No.: 60
 Unit 1: Why Public Speaking Matters Today
○ Getting your message across to others effectively requires

attention to message content, skill in communicating

content, and your passion for the information presented.

○ People have many reasons for engaging in public speaking,

but the skills necessary for public speaking are applicable

whether someone is speaking for informative, persuasive, or

entertainment reasons.

○ When preparing a speech, it is important to think about the

ethics of public speaking from the beginning. When a

speaker sets out to be ethical in his or her speech from the

beginning, arriving at ethical speech is much easier.

○
 Unit 2: Speaking Confidently
● Communication apprehension refers to the fear or anxiety people experience at

the thought of being evaluated by others. Some anxiety is a normal part of the

communication process.

● Communication apprehension stems from many sources, including the speaker’s

personality characteristics, communication context, nature of the audience, or

situation.

● There are many steps you can take during the speech preparation process to

manage your communication apprehension, including thinking positively,

analyzing your audience, clearly organizing your ideas, adapting your language to

the oral mode, and practicing.

● Plan ahead for how to cope with unexpected difficulties such as forgetting part of

your speech content, having technical trouble with visual aids, or being
 Unit 3: The Importance of Listening
● Understand the differences between listening and hearing.

● Hearing is the physiological process of attending to sound within one’s

environment; listening, however, is a focused, concentrated approach to

understanding the message a source is sending.

● Learning how to be an effective listener has numerous advantages. First, effective

listening can help you become a better student. Second, effective listening can help

you become more effective in your interpersonal relationships. Third, effective

listening can lead others to perceive you as more intelligent. Lastly, effective

listening can help you become a stronger public speaker.

● All audiences have a limited attention span. As a speaker, you must realize how

long you can reasonably expect an audience to listen to your message.

● The receiving stage of listening is the basic stage where an individual hears a

message being sent by a speaker.

 Unit 4: Audience Analysis
● Audience analysis should be conducted so you can acknowledge your audience

and their beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes.

● Demographic audience analysis focuses on group memberships of audience

members.

● Another element of audience is psychographic information, which focuses on

audience attitudes, beliefs, and values.

● Situational analysis of the occasion, physical setting, and other factors are also

critical to effective audience analysis.

● Several options exist for learning about your audience, including direct

observation, interviews, surveys, focus groups, and using existing research about

your audience.

● You can use your audience analysis to provide you further information about what

types of content would be appropriate and meaningful for your specific audience.
 Unit 5: Finding a Purpose and Selecting a Topic
● Selecting a topic is a process. We often start by selecting a broad area of knowledge

and then narrowing the topic to one that is manageable for a given rhetorical

situation.

● Conducting a personal inventory is a good way to start the topic selection process.

When we analyze our own experiences, interests, knowledge, and passions, we often

find topics that others will also find interesting and useful.

● Conducting a personal inventory is a good way to start the topic selection process.

When we analyze our own experiences, interests, knowledge, and passions, we often

find topics that others will also find interesting and useful.

● Moving from a general to specific purpose requires you to identify the who, what,

when, where, and why of your speech.

● State your specific purpose in a sentence that includes the general purpose, a

description of the intended audience, and a prepositional phrase summarizing the

topic.
 Unit 6: Researching Your Speech
● Research is a fascinating and fun process because it allows us to find answers to

questions, it exposes us to new ideas, and it can lead us to pursue new activities.

● Primary and secondary sources are quite common in research literature. Primary

research is where the author has conducted the research him or herself and

secondary research is when an author reports on research conducted by others.

● In conducting research for a speech, commit adequate time and plan your schedule.

Consider both the research time, or time spent gathering information, and the

preparation time needed to organize and practice your speech.

● Style focuses on the components of your speech that make up the form of your

expression rather than your content.

 Unit 7: Supporting Ideas and Building Arguments
● Speakers often use facts and statistics to reinforce or demonstrate information.

Unfortunately, many speakers and audience members do not have a strong

mathematical background, so it is important to understand the statistics used and

communicate this information to the audience.

● Types of Examples: Brief, Extended, and Hypothetical

Brief, extended, and hypothetical examples can be used to help an audience
better understand and relate to key points of a presentation.
● Storytelling points toward a single goal and, ideally, deepens our understanding of
who we are as human beings. Your story should not be forced, but should come across
as a natural part of your speech. If your audience thinks you're telling a story just
because you read that it was a good idea to do so, your story won't work.
● Systematically think through the support you have accumulated through your research.

Examine the accumulated support to ensure that a variety of forms of support are used.

Choose appropriate forms of support depending on the speech context or audience.

 Unit 8: The Body of a Speech
● Speakers can use a variety of different organizational patterns, including

categorical/topical, comparison/contrast, spatial, chronological, biographical,

causal, problem-cause-solution, and psychological. Ultimately, speakers must

really think about which organizational pattern best suits a specific speech topic.

● Speakers can use a variety of different organizational patterns, including

categorical/topical, comparison/contrast, spatial, chronological, biographical,

causal, problem-cause-solution, and psychological. Ultimately, speakers must

really think about which organizational pattern best suits a specific speech topic.

● The needs, interests, and expertise of the audience should be the central

consideration in choosing main points.

● Transitions are very important because they help an audience stay on top of the

information that is being presented to them. Without transitions, audiences are

often left lost and the ultimate goal of the speech is not accomplished.
 Unit 9: Introductions and Conclusions
● Introductions are only 10–15 percent of one’s speech, so speakers need to make sure they
think through the entire introduction to ensure that they will capture an audience.
● Linking the attention-getter to the speech topic is essential so that you maintain

audience attention and so that the relevance of the attention-getter is clear to your

audience.

● In developing the introduction to your speech, begin by deciding upon a statement to

capture the audience’s attention.

● An effective conclusion contains three basic parts: a restatement of the speech’s thesis; a

review of the main points discussed within the speech; and a concluding device that

helps create a lasting image in audiences’ minds.

● Miller (1946) found that speakers tend to use one of ten concluding devices. All of these

devices are not appropriate for all speeches, so speakers need to determine which

concluding device would have the strongest, most powerful effect for a given audience,

purpose, and occasion.

 Unit 10: Outlining
● Your outline can help you stay focused on the thesis of your presentation as you

prepare your presentation by testing the scope of your content, examining

logical relationships between topics, and checking the relevance of supporting

ideas.

● For an outline to be useful, it’s important to follow five basic principles:

singularity, consistency, adequacy, uniformity, and parallelism.

● Working outlines help you with speech logic, development, and planning.

● The full-sentence outline develops the full detail of the message.

● The speaking outline helps you stay organized in front of the audience without

reading to them.
 Unit 11: The Importance of Language
● Language is important in every aspect of our lives because it allows people to

communicate in a manner that enables the sharing of common ideas.

● Oral language is designed to be listened to and to sound conversational, which

means that word choice must be simpler, more informal, and more repetitive.

Written language uses a larger vocabulary and is more formal.

● Using appropriate language means that a speaker’s language is suitable or fitting for

themselves, as the speaker; our audience; the speaking context; and the speech

itself.

● Vivid language helps listeners create mental images. It involves both imagery (e.g.,

concreteness, simile, and metaphor) and rhythm (e.g., parallelism, repetition,

alliteration, and assonance).

● Public speakers need to make sure that they are very aware of their language. Six

common language issues that impact public speakers are clarity, economy,
 Unit 12: Delivering the Speech
● There are four main kinds of speech delivery: impromptu, extemporaneous,

manuscript, and memorized.

● Not every speaking setting happens in a classroom. As such, different

environments call for speakers to think through their basic speaking strategies.

● Good notecards keep you from reading to your audience.

● Good notecards are carefully based on key words and phrases to promote

recall.

● Good notecards should enhance your relationship with listeners.

● Conversational style is a speaker’s ability to sound expressive while being

perceived by the audience as natural. Conversational quality is a speaker’s

ability to prepare a speech and rehearse a speech but still sound spontaneous

when delivering it.

 Unit 13: Presentation Aids: Design and Usage
● Presentation aids should help audiences more thoroughly understand a speaker’s basic message.

● There are four basic reasons to use presentation aids. First, they increase audience understanding of a

speaker’s message. Second, they help audiences retain and recall a speaker’s message after the fact.

Third, they make a speech more interesting by adding variety. Lastly, by making a speaker’s overall speech

more polished, presentation aids can increase an audience’s perception of the speaker’s credibility.

● Various types of charts can aid audience understanding of a speaker’s message. Statistical charts help

audiences see and interpret numerical information. Sequence-of-steps charts show how a process occurs.

Decision trees help audience members see how a specific decision can be made in a logical fashion.

● Line graphs, bar graphs, and pie graphs are commonly used by speakers to help present numerical

information. The information presented on a graph should be clean and easily understandable from a

distance.

● Speakers in professional contexts are expected to be familiar with presentation software, such as

PowerPoint.
 Unit 14: Speaking to Inform and Entertain
● One important reason for informative speaking is to provide listeners with information so that

they can make up their own minds about an issue.

● Informative speeches must be accurate, clear, and interesting for the listener.

● A variety of different topic categories are available for informative speaking.

● One way to develop your topic is to focus on areas that might be confusing to the audience. If

the audience is likely to be confused about language or a concept, an elucidating explanation

might be helpful. If a process is complex, a quasi-scientific explanation may help. If the

audience already has an erroneous implicit idea of how something works then a

transformative explanation might be needed.

● There are eight common forms of ceremonial speaking: introduction, presentation, acceptance,
dedication, toast, roast, eulogy, and farewell.
● Inspirational speeches fall into two categories: goodwill (e.g., public relations, justification, and
apology) and speeches of commencement.
● Keynote speeches are delivered to set the underlying tone and summarize the core message of an
event.
 Unit 15: Persuasive Speaking
● Persuasion is the use of verbal and nonverbal messages to get a person to behave in a manner or

embrace a point of view related to values, attitudes, and beliefs that he or she would not have done

otherwise. Studying persuasion is important today because it helps us become more persuasive

individuals, become more observant of others’ persuasive attempts, and have a more complete

understanding of the world around us.

● There are four types of persuasive claims. Definition claims argue the denotation or classification of what

something is. Factual claims argue the truth or falsity about an assertion being made. Policy claims argue

the nature of a problem and the solution that should be taken. Lastly, value claims argue a judgment

about something (e.g., it’s good or bad, it’s right or wrong, it’s beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral).

● There are three common patterns that persuaders can utilize to help organize their speeches effectively:

Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantage. Each of these

patterns can effectively help a speaker think through his or her thoughts and organize them in a manner

that will be more likely to persuade an audience.

 Learning Outcomes

01 02 03 04
Helps establish rapport Helps learn Public Speaking Helps understand your Helps recognize how
with your audience techniques to reduce Public Speaking strengths visual aids can
nervousness and fear as a presenter and how to create impact and
appeal to different types of attention in Public
Speaking
people
 Learning Outcomes

05 06 07 08
Helps develop Public Helps learn some different Helps Prepare, practice, Helps improve your
Speaking techniques to ways to prepare and and deliver a short speaking skills,
create a professional organize information presentation
presence
 Conclusion
In summary, effective public speaking is a skill that can greatly
enhance your ability to communicate, influence, and connect with
others. By focusing on key elements like preparation, delivery, and
audience engagement, you can become a more confident and
compelling speaker. Remember, practice makes perfect, so keep
honing your skills and don't be afraid to embrace opportunities to
speak in public. With dedication and perseverance, you can become a
more impactful communicator and achieve your goals. Thank you for
your attention today, and I encourage you to apply these principles to
your future speaking endeavors.
 Thanks!
CREDITS: This presentation template was created by
Slidesgo, and includes icons by Flaticon, and
infographics & images by Freepik