• Identify factors that make speakers successful or unsuccessful
• Learn about and practice voice level, poise, and eye-contact
• Make a one-minute impromptu speech with no preparation
Materials:
• White board, board marker
• 30+ speech topics on small pieces of paper, cut up and put in a hat or box
Greetings and Introductions (10 minutes)
Introduce yourself to the class. Make sure to share your background and qualification. Share the course objectives and schedule. Let students how long the course will be and what speeches they wil be expected to deliver. If it is a graded course, make sure to outline how students will be assessed.
Say your name, where you’re from, and what you do. Give an example, before asking students to do the same. Say something like, “My name is Michelle. I am from America. I am a teacher at Ali Institute of Education.” Go around the room and let people introduce themselves. If they are teachers, ask what grade and what subjects so you can get an idea of how to relate the course material to the participants. If they are not teachers, ask when they most use public speaking.
Skit: What Not to Do! (10 minutes)
Enlist another teacher to perform this skit, or perform it yourself. Tell the students that you are going to leave the room, come back and pretend to start the class again. You will do many things wrong. Ask students to write down what you, or the model, doesn’t do very well.
Leave the room and come back immediately. Enter the room while talking on your mobile or otherwise distracted. Do several things in the course of the mock introduction to make you look like a bad public speaker. Some ideas are:
• Don’t make eye-contact
• Be unorganized
• Forget your board marker or chalk, ask students if they have any
• Keep a monotone voice with no smile
• Use a lot of fillers in speech – “uh,” “um”
• Look down at your notes
• Write sloppily on the board
• Don’t model what to do
• Explain things in a confusing way
• Fiddle with something while speaking
After you have done the skit, say, “Okay! Time out!”
Then ask students to explain what you did wrong. Hopefully they will pick up on the most obvious points.
Group Work: What Makes a Good Speaker? (10 minutes)
Ask each student to think of one person who is a great public speaker. They should write down that person’s name and write why he or she is an excellent speaker. If students are sitting in tables, ask them to share their answers with their tables. If not, put students into small groups of 4 to 5. Then ask them share their answers with the group.
Group Work: What Makes a Speaker NOT so Good? (10 minutes)
Ask students to think of someone who is a terrible speaker. They should NOT write the person’s name down in case they might offend others in the class. Ask them to write down why that person was not an effective speaker. Have them share in their groups. Walk around and listen to them. Ask a few of the most detailed accounts to be shared aloud with the entire class.
Presentation: Factors of Effective Speaking Part 1 (15 minutes)
Voice – explain and demonstrate the following characteristics of good and bad voice quality.
• monotone versus inflected
• fluid versus halting
• loud versus soft
• voice projection: using your diaphragm
To show voice projection, help students understand the difference between “head voice” and “chest voice.” Stand next to someone and talk in a normal “inside tone.” Then move further away from that person and use your “chest voice” or “outside voice” to make sure that person can hear you far away. Demonstrate the difference between a whisper and a stage whisper. Have students try it. If you have access to a big open space, try the following activity.
Ask students to get with partners. Start with students in two lines very close to their partners. Ask them to use the quietest voice possible to talk to their partners. Most will start with a whisper. Then ask them to move two steps away. Gradually ask them to move further and further away so that their voices carry further. This should help them learn how to use their diaphragms.
Poise – explain and demonstrate the following good and bad sides of poise. Explain that poise is how you stand and present yourself.
• slumped & lazy versus straight back & confident
• rigid versus relaxed
• shaking & nervous
• fidgeting
• showing your back to the audience
• pacing around the room
• bumping or hitting the table or podium inadvertently
Eye-Contact – explain and demonstrate how to keep the attention of the whole room by using eye-contact. Ask students why eye-contact is so important. Explain the importance of not staring at the ceiling, looking at the floor, or locking on one only one person’s gaze.
