Public Speaking: The Inside Story

Key Features

• Geared to public speaking courses taught fully online, hybrid, or face to face. Special sections in each chapter address unique aspects of virtual presentations for class or on the job.
• An underlying framework composed of the “Four Cs” (Curiosity, Control, Challenge, and Career) enriches the content, guides student learning, and is fully compatible with any teaching strategy or existing class preparation.
• Each of the text’s five major parts begins with a “Challenge Case Study” about an individual, representative student’s issues in a public speaking class. “What Do You Think?” questions follow these “Challenge Cases,” encouraging students to voice their own reactions to typical student concerns in the course and engage with the material. The case studies set the stage for each of the book’s five major parts.
• The five representative, case-study speakers deliver one speech, performed and filmed especially for this text and hotlinked to the digital book. Each part-opening “Challenge Case” and the associated short speech reflect key topics found in the subsequent group of chapters for readers to analyze and critique. The online, streaming speeches, which include both strengths and areas for improvement, provide opportunities for readers to practice their listening and evaluation skills.
• Each chapter is structured around an engaging learning format:
  • “Talking Points” at the start of every chapter summarize learning objectives and orient students to the material they are about to encounter.
  • Short “Challenge–Reaction–Insight–Action” boxes lead off each main head section, posing a leading or provocative question to engage students, prompt them to think critically about the chapter to come, and demonstrate what they already know and what they stand to learn.
  • Key terms highlight important concepts and terminology. These terms also appear at the end of each chapter and as an end-of-book glossary/index.
  • Embedded video links and short evocative or poignant quotes provide high-interest opportunities to stimulate readers’ interaction with the text.
• Key features, geared to particularly appeal to Generation Z students, appear throughout the chapter:
  • Challenge: On the Spot” mini-articles recognize that much of real-world public speaking is impromptu, informal, and common practice within the work environment. “Challenge” features help students become more comfortable with unexpected, short speaking opportunities and meet (or exceed) expectations.
  • “Curiosity: ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)” highlights important new or trending information on public speaking gleaned from a variety of sources including communication research, industry literature, internet highlights, social media, mass media, and blogs.
  • “Control: Put Fear in Its Place” reveals common speaking anxieties and mentors students on how to reframe anxiety as energy to fuel successful speeches.
  • “Career: WIIFM (What’s in It for Me?)” explains how fundamental concepts are pragmatically connected to the world of work and career success. These features help students understand the value of course material and envision how public speaking success intersects with their workplace futures.
  • “Speaking Virtually on the Job” and “Speaking Virtually for Class” contain advice about how online presentations—now representing an estimated 80 percent of presentations delivered in organizations—possess unique requirements in terms of setting, organization, and delivery.
  • “Insight-Action” features at the end of every chapter help students analyze important chapter concepts and integrate them into their personal and professional lives.
  • Exercises throughout the chapters allow students to practice new concepts and incorporate them into their own speech crafting.
• Author-prepared PowerPoint lecture slides include hotlinks to online video resources to provide interactive, visual interest for both synchronous and asynchronous online lectures.
• Liven up online class meetings with this book’s unique “PowerPoint Riffs” slides. Students deliver an impromptu speech based on a pre-prepared PowerPoint presentation. The game-like experience makes public speaking less stressful and more fun, while helping students learn to connect ideas and think on their feet.
• All supplements were written or reviewed by the author to help new adopters transition to the book and facilitate online class preparation and delivery.
• Simple integration of homework and test items with the most popular LMS platforms.