Introduction to Public Speaking
In this part of the course, we will focus on Public Speaking as an oral skill. Public Speaking, or the ability to prepare and present a speech to an audience, is a prominent skill in effective functioning in today’s society.
The Importance of Public Speaking
📺 Watch the video below on the Importance of Public Speaking.
The four main reasons why public speaking is an important skill:
1- Career Development: Being a good public speaker helps in enhancing one’s career. Being able to share the acquired knowledge with others is a sign of great leadership.
2- Personal Development: Getting a sense of personal value and a sense of confidence in doing well as a presenter.
3- Finding your voice: Practicing Public Speaking allows you to share your point of view with the world using your own unique voice and perspective about the subject.
4- Benefit others: The audience of your speech gets to learn from your speech and the knowledge and experience you have to share.
There is a big misconception that people in the field of tech do not need Public Speaking as a communication skill for their profession. But everyone needs to know how they can speak in public to inform, influence, and persuade others of their stand.
Like any other form of communication, Public Speaking also shares some of the most common features: Speaker, Audience, Message and Channel, Noise, Context, and Ethics.
We have looked at each of the latter features in the first part of the course C4S 1, but the newest feature in this list is Ethics. What do Ethics have to do with Public Speaking?
When giving a speech, it's crucial to take into account the ethical and moral implications of your message. This is because what you say can have a significant impact on your audience. Ethical concerns can arise at various stages of public speaking, such as selecting your topic, presenting research, and crafting persuasive appeals. These concerns can be looked at from an objective or subjective standpoint. An objective viewpoint considers the morality of an action to be absolute and not influenced by personal or cultural values, whereas a subjective viewpoint sees the morality of an action as dependent on cultural values and specific circumstances.
Self-Assessment
❓ Complete the quiz below to assess your current public speaking competency level. Please note that this quiz is not meant to label you but more to help you know where you stand as a public speaker now and what areas we should work on developing together.
Discuss
❓ After taking the quiz, what are some of the areas you think you should still develop to be better at public speaking? Use the Padlet below to share your answers.