Written By
Michael Dvorak
Instructor,
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Speak with a University Counselor today.
Approved by faculty for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences on June 25, 2024.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Grand Canyon University. Any sources cited were accurate as of the publish date.
Many individuals dread taking a public speaking class in college. As many as 77% of Americans say they suffer from a fear of public speaking.1 If you are one of the individuals that shares this fear, you can still benefit from this practice in college. By building your confidence and understanding the purpose behind your speech, you can apply the skills from this class to your life after college.
One benefit of a public speaking class is that you can gain confidence in your ability to communicate in front of people. By communicating in front of your classmates and teacher throughout your class, you will learn how to control your emotions and gain confidence to speak and present to your colleagues in your career. Seeing these speeches from your classmates may also help to instill an additional layer of confidence in you once you realize that most people share the same fears that you have about speaking in public. The practice gained through this controlled speech and debate participation can be applied to any career you may want to pursue.
While you take your public speaking class, you will be tasked with understanding different types of speeches. Understanding why you are giving your presentation will allow you to better tailor your message to your audience. If you are wanting to persuade your supervisor into giving you a raise, you need to present a very different message than if you are wanting to inform your coworkers about a new corporate initiative. Learning how different types of speeches are constructed allows you to present the best possible speech for any circumstance in your future career.
While you are delivering your class speeches, you will learn how to read your audience and adapt your delivery to what you are seeing. If there is an audience member that seems disinterested, you can recognize their nonverbal communication and focus on more welcoming audience members.
The ability to adapt your delivery will also extend to your ability to alter your emotional tone to better fit your message. When your audience seems engaged with your message, you can keep your emotional delivery consistent to keep them connected. On the other side of that, if you are seeing your audience becoming disinterested, you can change your tone to better hook them into your message.
One skill you will be taught in a speech and debate class is extemporaneous speaking. Understanding how to prepare a speech (or essays, or reports) in a short period of time will help take off some of the pressure surrounding the development of a presentation.
The biggest challenge individuals feel with any presentation is that fear of judgement and knowing that you can prepare adequately helps to lessen that fear of judgement. This ability to develop and organize your ideas quickly, while also learning how to construct sentences and messages as you are speaking will allow you to be ready to tackle any presentation you are tasked with outside of school.
A public speaking class can help you understand what types of research and evidence to use. As mentioned above, different speeches will have different desired outcomes. If you are trying to persuade a group of individuals, using a narrative or person’s story may help your audience connect with your message more than just listing off statistics.
While being able to list off statistics will be important, using multiple types of evidence will allow your message to have the greatest impact. These different types of evidence will come from very different sources and being able to practice researching will make it easier to know when to use different types of support and how to find them easily.
Public speaking is much like any other skill — you must practice being good at it. An NBA player never makes it to that level of success without practicing their skill for thousands of hours. Your public speaking class may not require that many “reps,” but practicing in class can make all the skills listed above easier to perform when your next speaking event comes up.
You shouldn’t just view your graded speeches as these practice reps, however. Make sure to practice those graded speeches for class to add to your total amount of speeches given. The more you give, and the more varied the circumstances and topics, the easier any presentation or speech will be in the future.
By taking a public speaking class in college, you can learn and practice skills that can be helpful in any career path. Grand Canyon University’s language and communications programs, such as the BA in Communications, allow students to develop their skills while overcoming their fear of public speaking. Discover how GCU’s online communication degrees support personal and professional growth through skill-building in areas like public speaking.
Michael Dvorak is an instructor with GCU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He teaches courses in public speaking, small group communication, intercultural communication, conflict and negotiation, argumentation and advocacy and more. He holds a master’s in communication from Northern Arizona University.
