Chapter One:
Framing the Public Speaking Course

Whether you like it or not, teaching involves you in the life of at least one institution. The public speaking course you teach is located in time and space. Whole histories, traditions, communities, disciplines, and varieties of culture have contributed to the moment you and your students will move together as a class. You will do well to familiarize yourself with the particular constraints and opportunities of the moment in which you will serve as an instructor. You and your students will contribute in some way to the tradition of the public speaking course at your institution. To contribute well demands that you develop a sense for your historical moment. That will mean assessing the current mission of the course in the life of your university, department, and discipline; setting definite objectives for your particular section(s); and grasping the rationale behind conventions incorporated in most public speaking courses today.

The Course in Your Community

Much of the record we have of public speaking in the ancient world (ordinarily called rhetoric) comes from master scholars of antiquity who earned their living by teaching people to advocate and defend their ideas and selves in their own communities. Of course they argued about methods, ethics, effects, and social implications, which constitutes most of what we have included in addition to surviving manuals and lecture notes. Most of them taught and wrote on a great deal more than public speaking as well. The point is, instruction in public speaking seems to predate written history in some human civilizations. Early historical records appear with public speaking teachers already on the scene and more-or-less gainfully employed at teaching concepts, methods, and skills inseparable from the local, temporal context.

At various times, public speaking instruction has taken the form of training in rhetoric, oratory, or elocution. Sometimes it has been referred to as declamation. In certain times and places in the Western world, courses in public speaking all but evaporated. Rhetorical ideas and skills initially associated with oratory shifted almost entirely to the written word. More recently, the advent of quantitative and qualitative social scientific approaches to communication has further expanded our ideas about public speaking. Although common ideas are woven through the historical tapestry that constitutes the background to your public speaking class, the teaching has truly varied from moment to moment and place to place; people were not all teaching the same thing and merely applying different labels. Public speaking courses reflect and shape the particular needs of the communities in which they emerge as an essential component of liberal higher education. When taught well, public speaking courses can become indispensable to the life of such communities. You must seek to understand the particular community in which your course is offered and frame it clearly for students in terms of the college or university, department, and discipline.

Institution: Mission, History, and Student Culture

At one public university, a story is told about how the public speaking course became a graduation requirement for all bachelors' degree candidates. A certain engineering professor was working with an unsurpassed doctoral student. At the end of his work at the university, the new Ph.D. was interviewed for a top industry position in the field. Part of the interview required a presentation of his research, which he handled poorly. He did not get the position. Some time later, when the professor became president of the university, one of his first official acts was to make the basic public speaking course an undergraduate requirement for every student.

What is the mission of the college or university in which you will teach public speaking? How is the mission connected to the history and tradition of the school? The educational missions and histories of institutions vary widely, even within similar categories. For instance, knowing that you are teaching in a university classified in a certain way provides little information to help you understand the institutional framework of your course. Most colleges and universities today have produced mission statements and written documentation on the history and mission of the institution. Read them carefully. But official documents and a school's reputation merely approximate the lived experience of students and faculty. As the story about the basic course at one university suggests, many aspects of the course you will be teaching may be tied to unwritten portions of history and particular interpretations of the mission statement. The course director, department chair, and other faculty members should be able to provide you with a fuller sense of institutional history and how the mission is being implemented.

Consciously contextualize the course within the mission, history, and life of the institution in which you serve—when you get to the point of teaching the course, members of the community should recognize its fit. By no means does a proper fit suggest that every instructor's course should be identical to other sections of the course, past or present. To the contrary, you will bring a unique perspective and personal approach to the course. Also, institutional cultures and communities are dynamic places. Simply remember that no public speaking course belongs to you alone. You have primary responsibility for instruction, and a well-defined role as the classroom instructor, but avoid the error of proceeding as though the course was yours alone.

If you are attentive to them, your students will instruct you quickly enough about the fact that every public speaking course is a collaborative, community experience. They will bring their own perspectives on the institution, its mission, and campus life. If possible, talk to a number of colleagues to begin to get a sense for student expectations of the public speaking course. In larger universities, bookstores often carry fall guidebooks for freshmen, which rate the difficulty and common workload for required courses. Although accuracy of such reports varies, you should be familiar with how the course is perceived by the student culture. On smaller campuses, you will probably have to rely on casual conversations with students. Do not be surprised by what you may discover. For instance, public speaking courses have a reputation for being contributors to grade inflation—an easy A. In some cases freshmen dominate the course, which is oriented to introduce them to college-level studies, while in others students put off taking the course until the latest possible term before graduation. The workload expected in the course varies widely as do the actual number of speeches. You may choose to accentuate the positive attributes and ameliorate the negatives, but you need a sense for what students expect when they walk into your classroom.

The importance of recognizing the interdependence of the public speaking course with the institution at large can be seen through an example of what can happen when we neglect such a perspective. A liberal arts college with some strong professional programs once required all students to take a public speaking course. A member of the faculty from another department in the college explained that the course was so weak and the instruction was so poor that the faculty decided to eliminate the course entirely and add public speaking requirements across the rest of the curriculum instead. In other words, public speaking teachers lost a sense for the importance and connection of the course to the college and provided substandard instruction. Students at the college now receive no grounding in the art of public speaking; they merely receive occasional opportunities to practice without the necessary instruction or training. There were certainly other factors, academic and political, that contributed to the demise of the public speaking course at the institution. But the example is not isolated; many courses that should be required, but lose their sense of connection to the life of the larger institution, suffer such fates. Therefore, make it your business to get a comprehensive profile on the school from a variety perspectives and get a head start on how various constituencies served by the course perceive the public speaking course.

Department: Linking the Institution and the Discipline

Most frequently, public speaking courses are offered through the communication or speech communication department. The department—your home as a teacher—mediates between the institution, with which you should now be somewhat familiar, and the scholarly discipline of communication. Give students a sense of how the course and your department fit within both realms. The department bridges two important intellectual communities of which you are a de facto member: the institutional community and the community of communication scholars. You live and work in both of them, a fact that should become evident to your students. Your classroom may be the first exposure that students have to someone working in the field of communication as a scholar and practitioner. The course will not only influence their perceptions of what it takes to speak effectively in public, but will also give them a distinct impression about what sort of questions interest people who study communication and how they address such questions. The quality of your instruction and the dynamism of your classroom as a learning environment should connect you to the discipline and your present and future work as a communication scholar. Expect interesting questions about communication to emerge from within the community of your institution and particularly through interaction with your students in the learning process.

Discipline: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

You have a unique opportunity to initiate your students into the field of communication through the public speaking course. On some occasions, instructors attempt to use the public speaking course as a promotional opportunity for the discipline by devoting a class session or two to talking about the communication field. We should recognize our promotional opportunities, but public speaking class does not lend itself well to surveying the possibilities for students within the field of communication. Neither does the course seem well suited to become a forum in which entire class sessions are dedicated to recruiting majors or minors for the department. However, as noted earlier, public speaking does play a foundational role in the history of the discipline, present thought and practice, and considerations for the future of communication.

Students should leave the course with a well-developed awareness of the role of public speaking in their society and with some sense of how they can use their skills and knowledge together to contribute to their communities today and tomorrow. Help them get situated historically, understanding how and why the course is being taught from a disciplinary perspective as well as from the perspective of the institution. For example, students will be glad to hear occasionally about exercises and assignments from the past through which they no longer are forced to suffer. They will also appreciate your clear explanations for the conceptual and skill demands currently being placed upon them, especially the connections you can make for them to their anticipated worlds beyond college. If you can make these connections, students will begin to grasp the pertinence of communication study to the world today and to the future.

Through the term, weave into the course your most interesting communication questions that have clear connections to various aspects of public speaking. For example, "How does a speaker call a particular audience into existence?" or, "To what degree does the audience participate in the creation of the message?" When you raise theoretical issues close to your own interests, you will naturally demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the discipline. Looking for such connections should energize your classroom manner as well, giving students a much better sense for the intellectual attraction and demands of the communication field than any dry rehearsal of hypothetical applications of communication.

Mission and Objectives of Your Course

How would you answer a student who asked, "Why should I take your public speaking course?" You should have a succinct response and rationale in your own mind that any student could understand. The answer should concentrate first on the basic concepts and skills you want each student to master within the framework of your institution, department, and the discipline. Although you should present the mission and objectives of the course to a student in the order listed above, the development should probably begin with the department and move to concepts and skills.

Connection to Departmental Mission

The course you teach should be purposely linked to the mission of your department. As noted earlier, the department integrates the field of communication into the institutional community of your college or university. The mission and objectives of the course should be clearly connected to both. Review the recurring emphases and themes in your own department. Whether or not the department has formalized a mission statement, how would you state the departmental mission in your own words? How does the course fit into the mission of the department? Think about questions like these: How many students take the course in a given semester or in the school year? Are Communication majors required to take public speaking? What range of people teaches public speaking for the department? What relationship, if any, exists between the course and funding for graduate students? Does a faculty member direct the course? If so, how much divergence exists between different sections of the course? If not, what kind of direction comes from the department regarding how to teach the course? As you begin to fashion your approach to the course, course calendar, assignments, and policies, make sure that they complement the larger mission of the department.

Specific Course Mission. The official course description is a good place from which to launch your version of the public speaking course. How does the catalog of courses describe Public Speaking? Notice the similarities and differences in emphasis and specificity in the following course descriptions for public speaking courses. The selections come from institutions that vary widely in size, mission, location, and so on. (Course numbers and other school-specific requirements have been omitted. All information came from Internet sites, which can be accessed on the NCA home page list of Communication Departments.)

• Public Presentations: Theory and Practice. Basic elements of the theory and method of effective and responsible public address; practice in a variety of speech situations; relevant technology; analysis and criticism. BRADLEY UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Essentials of Public Speaking. Composition and delivery of speeches to inform and persuade. Logical organization is stressed. CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY-LONG BEACH
  
  
• Public Speaking. [Public Speaking] is a course that provides you the opportunity to improve your skills in public speaking. In our global society, finding one's "voice" in issues relevant to local, national, and international issues requires both personal reflection and critical thought. This course is designed to help hone those skills that can help you become a more informed, proficient, and well-spoken member of both academic and business communities. COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Public Speaking. Practical and psychological principles of persuasive speech and negotiating. GENEVA COLLEGE
  
  
• Public Speaking. Develops communication skills necessary to analyze verbal discourse and to perform effectively in public speaking situations that confront the educated person. DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Public Communication. Study and practice of the basic techniques of public speaking used to inform and persuade audiences. Emphasis on the speech-building process: research, composition, organization, style, delivery, and criticism. GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Public Presentations. This course introduces students to the theory and practice of public speaking. Topics covered include methods of organizing a speech and delivery, the types and uses of evidence, and the effective use of visual aids. Students prepare and deliver several speeches including an informative speech, a persuasive speech and occasional speech, and a career simulation. HOPE COLLEGE
  
  
• Speaker-Audience Communication. Study of rhetorical theory and its application to the preparation, presentation, and criticism of oral discourse in audience situations. Special consideration of listening behavior and of the ethical conduct of speech in a free society. This course fulfills the College oral communication requirement. KANSAS UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Public Speaking. An advanced course in communication principles to develop skills in the analysis and presentation of speeches. MANKATO STATE UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Introduction to Public Speaking. Preparation, presentation, and criticism of speeches. Emphasis on the development of public speaking techniques through constructive criticism. UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
  
  
• Public Speaking. Theory and extensive practice in various types of speaking. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA-CHAPEL HILL
  
  
• Effective Speech. Introduction to speech communication: formal speaking, group discussion, analysis and evaluation of messages. Principles of communication, implemented through presentation of speeches, with some attention to group discussion and message evaluation. PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Presentational Communication. This course develops students' ability to research complex issues, organize facts, develop proposals, and competently deliver formal presentations to audiences. Presentational Communication curriculum offers a blend of public speaking skills (analytical, theoretical, and practical) and audience analysis skills (socio-demographic and psychological) to improve the effectiveness of students' oral communication, critical thinking, and listening skills. UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND
  
  
• Public Speaking. Study of the principles of public address to include the preparation and delivery of various types of speeches. STETSON UNIVERSITY
  
  
• Public Speaking. Training in speeches of social and technical interest designed to teach students to develop and illustrate ideas and information and to inform, stimulate, and persuade their audiences. TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
  
  

Note that while all the courses listed above seem to assume a performance component in the course—students will actually present speeches in class—the pedagogical objectives for the courses differ. The specific mission of your course should provide more detail than a course catalog description. It should begin to answer the student question, "Why take public speaking?" How much emphasis will be placed on preparation, organization, delivery, listening, critical thinking, types of speeches, research, visual support (conventional and electronic), theory, evidence, ethics, psychology, politics, business, academics, and group speaking? Your version of the course will not be able to include everything, so the mission should explain the focus and provide some basic reasons for the direction to be taken in the course.

Basic Course Objectives

To answer an inquiring student decisively, you need to outline objectives that make the mission of the course concrete. What are the principles, concepts, and skills that you expect students to learn? The list you state should be simple—not exhaustive, but 3 to 5 main objectives. Nevertheless, make them specific enough that at the end of the term, students can assess the course and your effectiveness at teaching to the objectives. A careful inspection of the textbook might get you started in this process. But most textbooks are designed to support your work in the course—you will still need to be selective about how to use the textbook and other resources. Remember Carroll Arnold's simple set of objectives—at the conclusion of the course, public speaking students should be able to:

1. Organize their messages.
2. Adapt their messages to the audience.
3. Speak extemporaneously.

The following examples show three variations on course missions and sets of objectives:

	Course I	Course II	Course III
Mission	To build competence in preparing and presenting speeches in a variety of workplace and community contexts.	To build competence in critical analysis and presentation of spoken public discourse.	To build presentational competence grounded in theoretical understanding of public speaking situations and practices.
Objectives	1. To organize a message.	1. To conduct critical analysis of public messages.	1. To conceptualize the dynamics of speaking situations and practices.
	2. To adapt a message to the audience.	2. To research a message.	2. To organize a message.
	3. To speak individually and in group contexts.	3. To organize a message.	3. To adapt a message to the audience.
	4. To speak extemporaneously.	4. To speak extemporaneously.	4. To speak extemporaneously.

Given the status of your course within the larger mission of the department within your institution and the field of communication, write or record the mission of your course and a set of course objectives that answer the question, "Why take public speaking?"

Extemporaneous Speaking

As you probably noticed, every set of objectives in the preceding table includes "To speak extemporaneously." Each of the four Allyn & Bacon public speaking textbooks mentioned earlier focuses on extemporaneous delivery. Were you to survey every public speaking textbook published in the past 25 years, you would be hard-pressed to find one that encourages students to write a manuscript, to memorize a speech, or to speak impromptu. (Most make exceptions for impromptu speaking under circumstances that preclude adequate preparation.)

Predominance in Public Speaking Courses

Introductory courses in public speaking are dominated by the extemporaneous method of delivery. Although most textbooks explain four delivery alternatives—memorization, manuscript, impromptu, and extemporaneous—a quick review of their pages reveals that the methods taught deal almost exclusively with extemporaneous speaking. As David Zarefsky explains in his public speaking text,

Extemporaneous presentation . . . is generally recommended for most speakers and speeches, because it encourages a conversational quality and is flexible enough to permit adaptation. Extemporaneous speaking is not impromptu; the speaker has planned the speech carefully, has a specific structure in mind, and probably has outlined the speech and prepared notes for use during presentation. But it also is not memorized or manuscript; the word-for-word text does not exist in advance of the speaker's delivery. In other words, the speech is prepared and rehearsed, but it is neither written out nor memorized. (p. 354)

Extemporaneous speaking has been practiced from earliest recorded history in the field. However, in many historical moments, students have been steered toward memorization of famous speeches or other literature, and experienced public speaking teachers continue to meet students who were taught to memorize or write manuscripts for their presentations in high school speech or English courses. Nevertheless, we have geared the overwhelming majority of college public speaking courses toward extemporaneous speaking today and that almost exclusively. Why?

Rationale for Emphasis

People in the general public still think about a speech as "written." Indeed, most of the political speeches, news coverage, and commentary seen and heard by the public on media outlets are variations on manuscript speaking. But public speaking pedagogy assumes that such presentations constitute a small fraction of all of the public speaking that goes on in the world on any given day. In other words, although people might expect that good speakers need to write out speeches word-for-word and either read the manuscript or memorize their remarks, public speaking pedagogy promotes extemporaneous delivery. The depth of commitment to extemporaneous speaking emerges from at least three commonplaces: (1) practical considerations; (2) theoretical commitments; (3) superior preparation for the whole range of speaking situations.

Most of the presentations should be delivered extemporaneously. Through the course of their working lives and beyond, most students will need extemporaneous delivery skills much more than any other presentation method. The majority of workplace speaking situations are best suited to such presentations. But many presenters work without any grasp of extemporaneous delivery, use other methods, and communicate in a mediocre fashion (to which professionals have grown accustomed). If our students can learn strong extemporaneous speaking skills, then they stand to improve the communication in their workplaces and communities, as well as advance their ideas effectively.

Extemporaneous speaking rests on a solid conceptual base. Even if there were not such remarkable practical advantages to extemporaneous delivery, most communication scholars would advocate the method, based on theoretical grounds such as the transactional nature of human communication—the idea that human beings in face-to-face contact are simultaneously sending, interpreting, generating, and receiving messages. Therefore, speakers who can employ a delivery method that promotes full participation with the audience in a transactional mode are positioned to communicate most effectively. Speakers need to read and respond to audience feedback during the presentation. For a prepared message, only extemporaneous delivery allows for such interchanges with the audience.

Finally, extemporaneous speaking places a wider variety of demands on students, and prepares them to perform the other methods of delivery more effectively if necessary. Speakers accustomed to developing extemporaneous speeches are more likely to write manuscripts addressed to the ears of the audience (writing for the ear rather than the eye). Likewise, they will be less fearful about eye contact and the broad range of non-verbal communication at their disposal, recognizing the need for fuller communication with the audience, whether speaking from the pages of a manuscript or from memory. Extemporaneous speaking introduces students to the contrast between the spoken and written word and helps them to begin to train themselves in oral practices and performance.

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