Public Speaking Book

Background

This is one of four books I wrote while working as a lecturer at Rajabhat University, Buriram, Thailand. I wrote it because I was assigned to teach a public speaking course that had no textbook, nor a properly written curriculum. This book served as both and was very popular with students. As you can see in the table of contents below, my strategy was simple...

to make sure students understood the basic structure of a speech--introduction with a thesis statement, a body, and a conclusion.
to teach students how to deliver different kinds of speeches for different occasions--motivational, demonstrative, persuasive, informative, and sales presentations.

Analysis of a Sample Chapter

Chapter Goal

to produce and deliver properly formatted motivational speeches that compel people to act

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this chapter, students will

- understand the purpose of giving motivational speeches.
- identify the components of a properly written introduction paragraph for a motivational speech.
- use emotion and story telling strategies to produce introductions that capture listeners' attention and provides a thesis statement.
- identify the components of a properly written motivational speech body section.
- produce motivational speech bodies that show listeners need, provide details of what they want them to do, and show the benefits of doing so.
- identify the components of a motivational speech concluding paragraph.
- use questions, call to actions, and/or quotations to produce a concluding paragraph for a motivational speech.
- deliver a motivational speech that compels listeners to action.

Analysis of Learning Outcomes

- understand the purpose of giving motivational speeches.
  - The theory of andragogy, states that adult learners have a strong need to know why they are learning something. This learning outcome was added as a tool to motivate students by addressing their need, as adult learners, to learn practical and useful information.
- identify the components of a properly written introduction paragraph for a motivational speech.
  - "Identifying" components here is the lowest order learning outcome ("remembering" on Bloom's Taxonomy). It was designed in this case to impart knowledge through student-centered interaction with learning materials (a sample persuasive essay).
- use emotion and story telling strategies to produce introductions that capture listeners' attention and provides a thesis statement.
  - "Producing" is the highest order learning outcome ("create" on Bloom's taxonomy). It may seem that students have jumped, quite rapidly, from the lowest to the highest order learning outcomes; however, the middle stages of analysis and synthesis were already covered in chapter 1. At this point students are assimilating what they learned in Chapter 1 (the general structure of speeches) with the specific nuances of a persuasive essay.
- The analysis for the learning outcomes for the introduction paragraph can be applied to the learning outcomes for the body and concluding paragraphs.
- Deliver a motivational speech that compels listeners to action.
  - This is another representation of the highest order learning outcome, the difference being that we have now moved from producing the speech material to delivering the actual speech--accomplishing the chapter's goals.