Public Speaking

16 CHAPTER^2 Giving Your First Speech: Developing Confidence

other. One way to balance the scale is to increase your response capability by studying

harder, preparing better, and practicing in ways that improve your speaking abilities.

3. Changing perceptions is the third strategy. You might exaggerate the objective
   demands, or you may not give yourself enough credit for your response capability.
   In contrast, you might reevaluate the consequences and see if they really are that seri-
   ous. There’s a difference between not succeeding and not succeeding completely,
   and in the big scheme of things, doing poorly on a speech won’t destroy your life.

The remainder of this chapter gives you ideas for implementing these strategies.

Develop Skills to Overcome Process Anxiety

“Next week, your speech is due”—Martens would call this the “objective demand.”

When you first receive the assignment you may begin to experience anticipatory speech

anxiety,^7 which is typically high just after the speech is announced.^8 Why? Perhaps

you fear the unknown—it’s like finding yourself in a dark, unfamiliar place without a

flashlight.^9 Or, as Martens would say, you doubt your ability to respond. Fortunately,

understanding the objective demand by studying speech principles and observing others

speak, plus gaining response capability by actually giving speeches removes some of the

mystery from the process. As speech-making becomes more familiar, most people expe-

rience less process anxiety and the panicky feelings that accompany it.^10

To teach the principles of speech-making, Roman educators identified five major

categories of good speech-making—each one containing a set or canon of principles,

standards, or guidelines that students should master to become effective speakers.

The canons of rhetoric^11 are (1) invention—creating speech content; (2) disposition or

arrangement—organizing speech materials; (3) style—choosing effective language;

(4) memory—learning the major ideas; and (5) delivery—actually performing the speech.

Learning the principles in the canons will give you the how-to skills you need to relieve

some of your process anxiety.

Create Your Speech: The Canon of Invention

The canon of invention provides guidelines for creating your speech content. Just as

an inventor designs a product to meet a particular need, you design your presentations

to meet a need for a specific audience in a specific situation. With any speech assign-

ment, be sure you understand the expectations regarding general requirements and time

limits. This text devotes nine chapters to this vital canon, but as a general introduction

and to help you prepare your first speech, several principles are briefly summarized here.

Choose a Topic

Finding a classroom topic that will interest your listeners is challenging. (In some con-

texts, such as in an organization or workplace, your topic will be obvious.) The first

class assignment is often either a self-introduction or the introduction of a classmate.

If so, topic choice is partly chosen for you, but you must also find an interesting focus.

Avoid boring your audience with well-known material presented in a predictable way.

(Chapter 5 covers topic selection, and Appendix B plus the text’s online resources show

how other students successfully chose topics.)

Consider the Audience and the Setting

Another major task is to think from the diverse perspectives of your audience. What

interests them? What is relevant to their lives? Analyze your listeners for demographic

anticipatory speech
anxiety tension experienced
at the mere thought of giving
a speech

canon a set of principles,
standards, norms, or
guidelines

canons of rhetoric prin-
ciples, standards, norms, or
guidelines for creating and
delivering a speech

canon of invention prin-
ciples for designing a speech
that meets a need of a spe-
cific audience

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