Public Speaking - Part 1

4. A chart comparing characteristics of listening and hearing:

Public Speaking and Communication

1. Motivated gestures mean: gestures that are not inserted artificially or at random; rather, they should contribute naturally to the emphasis of the thought.

2. Guidelines/procedures of answering questions from the audience:

~  look at & listen to the questioner attentively, clarify the question, compliment the question, restate or repeat the question to involve all audience members, answer the question directly & briefly, check the response with the questioner

3. Four ways to put emphasis on a word or a phrase:

1. Repetition – repeating key words and important points (exact repetition: information is repeated in exactly the same words; concentrated repetition: the information is reinforced immediately after it is said the first time but different words were used when the data was expressed the second time)
2. Pointer Phrases – e.g. Now here is an important fact…
3. Oratorical Emphasis – e.g. dramatic pauses, vocal inflection, changes in volume & the use of gestures
4. Visual Reinforcement – using visual aids to aid memory

4. Importance to maintain eye contact with the audience:

Maintaining eye contact with the audience is the speaker’s way of saying ‘I’m aware of your presence, and I want to establish communication with you.’ It is also an important means of establishing rapport with the audience; let people know you are interested in the feedback they give you as you deliver the speech; eye contact is used to determine the sincerity, credibility and confidence level of a speaker

5. What you have learnt and experienced in this course:

1. What does public speaking mean to you?
2. How do you feel if you are asked to give a speech to an audience?
3. Have you gained the benefits (or achieved your goals) from learning public speaking?
4. Of all that you have learned, what is the most useful and important to you?

Suggested answers:

a. It means talking to a group of audience, with constant eye contact to communicate ideas and make connections with the audience.

b. Still feeling nervous but I’d accept the challenge to improve myself using the knowledge and skills in public speaking that I have learned.

c. Yes – improvement in communicating ideas in English, more confident to speak in public; No – nervous symptoms still a problem, unable to organise ideas systematically

d. I have learned that it is important to have eye contact when talking to other people; the speech outline is a systematic way to organise the content of a speech from the beginning to the end.

 Public Speaking and Communication

1.        Personal opinion on Public Speaking.

        Suggested answers:

        Public speaking means giving a speech to a group of people on a special occasion like Teacher’s Day, opening ceremony of an event, graduation.

1. Nervous, self-conscious, butterflies in the stomach, scared; challenging, fun, confidence booster, empowering.
2. To be a more confident, fluent, effective public speaker; to gain confidence, improve the command of English, overcome the fear of speaking in front of an audience.

2.        What should you do to give a good speech.

        Suggested answers:

- write out the speech and memorise the script;

- practice, practice, practice!

- choose an interesting title;

- make it short, funny and captivating;

- speak clearly with a moderate speed;

- use simple language and make sure one idea is connected to another naturally.

3.        Ethics.

        Answers:

1. Because speechmaking is a form of power, it carries with it heavy (ethical, sociological, psychological) responsibilities.
2. (Rhetoric, Ethics, Theology) is a branch of philosophy that deals with issues of right and wrong in human affairs.
3. In public speaking, sound ethical decisions involved weighing a potential course of action against

1. a set of ethical standards of guidelines.
2. the practicality of taking that course of action.
3. a set of legal criteria for acceptable speech.
4. the speaker’s goals in a given situation.

4. Which of the following violates the speaker’s ethical obligation to be honest in what she or he says?

1. juggling statistics.
2. quoting out of context.
3. citing unusual cases as typical examples.
4. all of the above.

5. Even though it is not easy to assess a speaker’s goals, it is still necessary to ask ethical questions about those goals.                                                True / False
6. The larger the audience becomes, the greater is the ethical responsibility of the speaker to be fully prepared.                                                         True / False

4.         Impromptu Speech: Self-introduction

        Suggested answer:

        Good morning to everyone. My name is John Ooi Teck Leong, you can call me John or my nickname TL. My hometown is Sitiawan, Perak. My parents run a small family business in town. I have an elder sister and two younger brothers. When I’m free, I like to hang out with my friends, play basketball and watch the TV. I come to UTAR because I want to become an accountant, and my parents believe UTAR is the right place for me. In the future, I hope to become a successful accountant, run my own auditing firm, buy a big house for my family and travel around the world. That’s all, thank you!

5.         Famous & influential speakers of the world.

        Suggested answers:

Mahatma Gandhi – political & spiritual leader of India who fought for independence

Aung San Suu Kyi – freedom fighter of Myanmar

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill –Prime Minister of the U.K. during WWII

John F. Kennedy – 35th President of the USA (1917-1963)

Martin Luther King – civil rights activist, USA (1929-1968)