Thank you for your attention last week in Workshop 1! I hope that your speech projects are moving along and that you will go into the weekend with most of your research finished and your content prepared. Your “extemporaneous” speeches at the end of last week’s class suggest that you know how to engage an audience and that you have a lot of potential. By way of review, I just wanted to give a few reminders before you take the lectern Monday evening…

This week’s Top 10 Speaking Tips

I assume you’ve given your topic the “So what?” test. In other words, when you speak the title of your speech—make sure you have a title!—will your classmates say, “So what?” You need the title to pique their interest—it’s the “headline” of your “story.”

Likewise, as you rehearse each point of your speech, continue to ask the question “So what?” Make sure each point advances your “message” and will keep the audience’s interest. If any point fails the “So what?” test, delete immediately or re-conceive and re-write.

Time yourself three or four times to make sure you’re getting an accurate time. Since you’re just filling three to five minutes, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

Practice enunciation and pronunciation. If you mis-pronounce a word, listeners will assume you don’t know what the word means.

Are you Persuading, Informing, Entertaining or offering a mix? Make sure one of these areas is a dominant part of the mix and make sure each point of your speech supports that goal?

What “noise” might occur during your speech? A low-volume voice? Concepts that listeners aren’t familiar with until you explain them? Your habit of leaning on the lectern?

Depending on the purpose of your speech (P, I or E), make sure you use a pattern of reason (see pages 274 and 276).

Establish rapport with your audience through eye contact that’s directed back and forth throughout the room.

Do you have sufficient supporting material to persuade listeners to your point of view? At the very least, you need three or four strong points. More, if you can fit them in.


I will have a system whereby speakers will know if they are on minute 2, minute 3, minute 4, etc. You’ll know when you pass minute 5 because the floor will drop out from under you…

Two more reminders

In your team teaching assignments, cover as much material as possible and do it in a way that communicates creatively and memorably.

Don’t forget your nameplates, preferably produced in two highly contrasting colors for effective readability.

Indianapolis students of the IWU CAPS Com 115 course:

On Monday, April 9, at 6 p.m., we meet for the first workshop of the Introduction to Human Communication (COM 115) class. I look forward to meeting with each of you and learning what you might bring to our excursion through, what I have coined, the “Kingdom of Communication.”

I’m referring to it as a “kingdom” because communication is an expanse of study that can grow across its disciplinary borders and touch fields as diverse as journalism, business, psychology, sociology, and on it grows. For our five-week excursion, we will attempt to mark out a territory that includes both verbal and nonverbal communication, interpersonal and intrapersonal communication, small group and organizational communication, speech communication and mass communication.

Because the course covers both theoretical and practical aspects of the subject of communication, we’ll all share in the joy of writing and giving speeches. So that your instructor can feel your pain, he too will write and present a speech, and it won’t be one that he has already given at the Rotary Club. Monday night he’ll also pass out maps for the journey, a.ka. syllabi.

Speaking of your instructor...

...Allow me to introduce myself and show what I can bring to the study as official facilitator. I have worked my entire career as an editor, writer and creative director in the areas of advertising, journalism, marketing communications and education.

This mini-resume will show you where I’ve been professionally…
■ Quinlan Keene Peck & McShay Advertising & Marketing
■ Anderson University Office of Publications
■ Gaither Music Company Marketing
■ Indiana Wesleyan University Marketing Communications
■ Jack Williams, Ink. (my free-lance business)

I’ve also served free-lance stints as…
■ Copy editor, publishing company
■ Feature columnist/Anderson Herald Bulletin
■ Running columnist/Anderson Herald Bulletin
■ Contributing editor/Community Spirit (magazine of Community Hospitals Foundation in Indianapolis)
■ Writer, North Anderson Church of God communications

The following career milestones make me feel either:
□ proud □ old □ proud to be old
■ Nearly 300 newspaper columns
■ Nearly 200 magazine articles
■ Approximately 500 print ads composed
■ Co-founder, editor of university alumni magazine
■ Editor, music product catalog with international mailing list of 1 million
■ Winner of three Addy awards for print communications
■ Mentioned in the Writer’s Digest book, How to Write Like An Expert About Anything

I have earned two degrees in Communication, the human kind and the arts kind…
■ M.A., Communication Arts/University of Notre Dame
■ B.A., Human Communication/Bethel College

Note also that the "View my complete profile" link in the upper right hand column provides some conversation starters in case you ever get stuck in an elevator with me.

Monday night’s comin’

As a lifelong laborer in the Kingdom of Communication, I pledge to do my best to make Com 115 an enjoyable, productive and unforgettable classroom experience. I hope you'll do the same! Here’s a sneak peek at Monday night’s goings on…

Discussion of chapters 1, 8, 10, 11 which of course you have already read by now ■ A lecture on the theories that keep communication eggheads in full time work ■ Form project teams so you can do some of the teaching next week ■ Watch “Speaking Effectively” video featuring a man having a bad hair day ■ Narrow topic for Workshop 2’s speech assignment (start thinking now!) ■ Do in-class communication exercise that ends with 50 situps ■ The instructor’s speech on how to give a speech ■ Sundry other things that I happen to think of ■ Did I mention I’m psyched for this class?

Speaking of Communication

“The word communication comes from the Latin communis, which means to share, make common, or even to have the possession of a common faith.”
— Communicating for Life by Quentin J. Schultze