In school, you may need to give some speeches, such as “how-to” speeches or persuasive speeches, with the goal of presenting information to a group of people and making them understand. We rarely have the opportunity to speak freely in front of a captive audience, but public speaking permeates almost all areas of our social and professional activities. It is essential to go beyond the basics of high school speeches and learn how to formulate and present a solid argument.
Your college education is about taking learning to the next level. Teaching eighth-grade students how to turn a one-dollar bill into an origami crane, a skill you acquired in the past eight years, is not sufficient to convey the more complex knowledge you are about to gain. As you develop your academic or professional skills in a specific field, you need better tools to showcase new knowledge.
Think about successful people you know; most, if not all, of them may be great communicators. This is not a coincidence; their communication skills contribute to propelling their success, and it can foster yours too.
Speaking is utilizing your knowledge.
You have received 13 years of formal education, and you will go through at least four more challenging years (perhaps exceeding $100,000) to further develop your thinking. You know a lot, but what good is it if you cannot express it to others?
The core of public speaking is spreading your knowledge in a useful way. Mortimer Adler, one of the editors of the “Great Books” series, wrote in his book “How to Speak, How to Listen” that public speaking is like the relationship between a pitcher and a catcher in baseball. The speaker is like the pitcher, delivering information to the listener, the catcher, for reception. They work together with equal responsibility(sources from usms.ac.ma).
However, the pitcher starts by throwing a catchable ball; no one can easily catch a wild pitch.
A public speaking course will teach you how to collect and organize information, not only to deliver information as expected as a speaker but also to enable the audience to process information effectively. A media host I worked with demonstrated that his research on public speaking often exposed gaps in his material. As he organized information, he found knowledge gaps he needed to fill, especially since these gaps would pose difficulties for the audience. He said that, in most cases, public speaking is completed before you actually say a word, just like actors rehearse for months before performing the first line of a script. He is an effective speaker because planning and organizing force him to become an expert.
The outline of the public speaking course at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development details the importance of high-level organization in effective communication. While some people may notice rhetorical talent, most of the course focuses on how to arrange information and practices to avoid harming your argument.
Completing a public speaking course means throwing pitch after pitch accurately, and the catcher doesn’t have to jump or emphasize the endpoint of the next pitch.
But speaking is also listening.
Your public speaking course will help you become a pitcher, but as Adler said, understanding what it feels like to be a catcher is essential too. The dichotomy of public speaking, feeling both as a speaker and as an audience, is the core of effective communication, and that’s why my friend John is a great doctor.
John is highly trained, but it’s his communication skills that make him exceptional. As a medical professional, he has to explain detailed information and concepts to people without a medical background, and the stakes are high. He doesn’t want patients to be scared by information, but he also needs them to take it seriously. If he says too much or uses the wrong tone, patients can shut down, withholding information crucial for him to help them.
Like the media host, John knows he has to master knowledge and organize information. His audience is usually an individual patient, so he takes on their role to anticipate understanding issues and answer as many questions as possible before the patient asks. John has a unique dual responsibility: he has to be informative and appropriately persuasive for patients to accept treatment or intervention. Social sharing.
In school, you may need to give some speeches, such as “how-to” speeches or persuasive speeches, with the goal of presenting information to a group of people and making them understand. We rarely have the opportunity to speak freely in front of a captive audience, but public speaking permeates almost all areas of our social and professional activities. It is essential to go beyond the basics of high school speeches and learn how to formulate and present a solid argument.
Charleston University’s public speaking course outlines the importance of listening and understanding the audience. In the expected learning outcomes of the course, students are advised on how to analyze their audience and “consider them as an audience themselves,” both in speaking and listening roles. Both speaking and listening roles require careful, thoughtful practice, and in any conversation, you have to do one or the other.
Good speakers get what they want.
You may not become a media host or a doctor, but you will encounter situations where effective communication is crucial.
Simple, common experiences show how important clear, efficient speech skills are for successful outcomes. We have all seen many dissatisfied customers in stores (likely ourselves) struggling to resolve issues. A knowledgeable customer who understands a product or service enough to detail why it went wrong and should not have gone wrong can be stifled by a reaction they don’t understand. Understanding the potential behaviors of employees or managers, limiting the customer, can propose a feasible solution to the audience while asking the employee to give you the product for free and compensate for your time.
In both cases, the first two points apply: you must understand your subject and organize information well, and you also need to understand your audience. Consider the following situations:
A parent angrily complaining about their child’s low math grades hits a wall. A parent who has researched math courses and teaching can work with the child’s teacher to find a solution.
Do you think you deserve a raise? Being able to showcase your value to a company, understand how your boss compensates your abilities, increases your chances of getting the value you deserve.
From dealing with a difficult airline to professional social networks and dinners, when people can listen to you with ease and comfortably engage in conversation, you will get good results. Cultivating your communication skills when you are young will benefit you throughout your life.
You may be good, but you can always get better. Developing communication skills has no limits, which is why President Obama (and every executive) has a team to assess his ideas and provide feedback. A formal public speaking course can make you comfortable with peer criticism, benefiting from it, and your own criticism is encouraged and expected. It’s an excellent (and rare) opportunity to analyze your speech professionally and equally valuable practice of providing useful criticism to others in a professional and constructive manner(quotes from usms).
By the time you graduate from college, you will have invested 17 years and 80% of your life in your education. To fully leverage this in your professional and personal life, you need to be able to speak effectively, be an excellent listener, or else all the knowledge you have accumulated will have nowhere to escape.
