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Teaching public speaking skills equips students with an invaluable tool for effective communication and leadership roles. Here are some tips on how to guide students in developing their public speaking skills.
 | Students should have practice giving many
different types of speeches. |
Teach the importance of body language. Emphasize the importance of good posture, facial expressions, eye contact and gestures such as hand and body movement when giving a speech. Explain that an audience’s engagement with the speech relies on the speaker’s body language. Show video clips of both engaging and boring speakers and point out the body language differences. Assign small speech assignments so that each student can practice good body language while speaking.
Teach the importance of audience consideration. Students should learn that they need to give a speech that is catered to the type of audience they will be speaking to. Teach how to consider the audience’s political views, type of religion, age, gender and social class and how this should shape the delivery method and tone of speech. One way to demonstrate and practice audience consideration is by dividing the class into many groups and assigning each group a demographic to represent. Write a speech topic on the board and each group must write a short speech on the same topic for their specific demographic. Have each group present their version of the speech listing the demographic they represent. Discuss as a class the differences you see in the way each demographic should be spoken to.
Teach the different types of speech delivery. Students should have practice giving many different types of speeches.
- Extemporaneous speeches are those that are planned and written out before hand. These require forethought and sometimes even research. Encourage the use of visual aids and PowerPoint. One way to practice extemporaneous speaking is to have students choose from a list of topics that they would like to speak about. It is easier for students to engage in speech writing and preparing if they are interested in the topic.
- Impromptu speeches are those that have little to no preparation time. A student must learn to think on the spot and develop a speech as they go. Have students pick out topics from a hat and have 2 minutes to prepare before they must deliver a 3 minute speech on the topic. Make sure to do fun topics so that students have fun using their creativity.
- Manuscript speeches are simply reading aloud. Stress the importance of glancing up at the audience and have the student practice getting up and reading various materials while making eye contact with the class.
Teach the many different types of speech. Explain and demonstrate the differences between demonstrative, persuasive, expository and commemorative speeches. Show the class video clips of interesting and real life examples of each type of speech. Then assign students with a certain type of speech, allowing them to choose their topic from a list of possibilities or on their own.
- Demonstrative speeches are those that explain how to do a task.
- Persuasive speeches are those that take a position on an issue and try to convince the audience to agree with the speaker’s opinion by using emotion, logic and statistics, and proving that the speaker has authority in the topic.
- Expository speeches are those that seek to explain, describe and perform something to an audience without including the opinion of the speaker.
- Commemorative speeches are those that honor and celebrate a certain person or event and give inspiration to the listeners.
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