Teacher Resources: Classroom Practices - Public Speaking

Several years ago the Writing Program added a Public Speaking Component to English 101. Besides being consistent with the conversational metaphor that informs our pedagogy, this requirement helps students to practice a communication skill that will be valuable to them throughout their education, and later, in their careers. For both teachers and students, the Public Speaking component should not constitute a burden; it is best thought of as a way to formalize some of the many occasions when students already speak in your class.

We require each English 101 student to make three, brief, oral presentations in class. The Public Speaking exercises used by most teachers can be arranged in three categories: Reading, Writing, and Context. Any of these kinds of Public Speaking exercises can be presented by a single student within a small group, by a single student before the whole class, or by a group of students before the whole class. Teachers typically vary the format and the type of presentation so as to give students the opportunity to find the ones that work best for them, as well as to expose students to the range of ways that public speaking might function.

The Reading exercises typically require students to make brief presentations on some aspect of the currently assigned reading. Some teachers find it more useful to have students present on a question asked ahead of time, while others require students themselves to pose questions for the class to explore. In either case, the point is to make students the initiators of discussion. This works especially well when several students present on the same question or topic: inevitably there are significant and interesting differences in their presentations, and the teacher then need do little more than point to these for good discussion to ensue.

The Writing exercises tend to be less aimed at starting discussion about the assigned reading (though they often do so) than at providing occasions for students to help one another produce better drafts. For instance, some teachers ask small groups of students to identify weak and strong areas in one another's rough drafts, and then to present these to the class along with suggested revisions that they have arrived at together. On the days when final drafts are due, some teachers have students present their "finished" projects to the class, and then have chosen students evaluate these. When this works, students both make excellent presentations of their work and also discover ways in which their papers might be revised even further.

Finally, the Context exercises require students to present the results of research they have undertaken on some aspect of the assigned reading. But in addition to presenting such information simply as a way of explaining something in the text that had been unclear, students are also encouraged to present their research so as to "open up" the assigned reading.

In every case, although public speaking exercises always involve monologue –the single speaker making a sustained point before his or her peers– they should also, often, lead to dialogue of some sort. That is, we want students to treat speaking in public not just as the presentation of finished thought, but also as thinking in public: making one's thought public, and so inviting, and expecting, response from others.

Grammar Presentation
Students must do at least one oral presentation on a grammatical issue, based on the handbook and examples they come up with themselves. As an instructor, you can facilitate the class working out how to identify grammatical errors, and how to understand and apply grammatical rules. To be effective, the emphasis needs to fall on the students taking responsibility for instruction in a setting of peer review. As a minimum these topics need to be covered within the semester: "MLA Citation Guidelines," "Plagiarism and Boundaries: Your Words and the Writer's," "Sentence Integrity When Using a Quote," "Subject-Verb Agreement," "Verb Tense Shift," "Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement," "Vague Pronoun Reference," "Sentence Fragments," "Run-on or Fused Sentences," "Comma Splices," "Other Comma Usage," and "Apostrophe to Show Possession." It is up to each instructor when these presentations are made and in what order. We would recommend fitting them into the revision day when samples from the rough drafts are discussed, that is, after the peer reviews are done and before the final draft is due. You could then go over the topic again on the day the final draft is due. You might assign two students to each type of error, and have them present at different times so that the material is covered at least twice using different examples.

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