Note 3

3. SPEAKING IN PUBLIC
o Study after study has shown that communication skills, including public speaking, are among the most prized assets job recruiters look for when hiring college or university graduates. Regardless of your profession, you will almost surely need the art of public speaking. Meaning, you are expected to have the ability to stand on your feet, either on a one-to-one basis or before a group, and make a presentation that is convincing and believable. o For you all, even before you graduate and venture into the real world part of other courses would require you to present your ideas, your work, your project to the class. You have to be confident enough to effectively put your message or intended meaning across. To have that confidence, you must know what you are talking about...know the subject well enough. To get ideas across effectively, you must use an amount of creativity set deep within you. And how do you achieve all this.... by understanding communication principles, knowing how important it is to be creative and original, and practice, practice and practice! o Similarities Between Public Speaking & Conversation o Organising your thoughts logically. o Tailoring your message to your audience. o Telling a story for maximum impact. o Adapting to listener feedback. o o Differences Between Public Speaking & Conversation o Public speaking is more highly structured. o Public speaking requires more formal language. o Public speaking requires a different method of delivery.
o THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS o Why Communicate? o ...Because communication is a process that enables us to learn about other people through sharing of experiences and passing information. This is important in establishing and building relationships, whether they are domestic, social, business and professional. o The Communication Chain o Communication is a chain of events which has 5 distinct dimensions: o .the sender has the need to communicate o .the need is translated into a message o .the message is transmitted o .the receiver gets the message o .the receiver interprets the message and provides feedback o Let's look at these in turn... o .The need to communicate is intrinsic/inherent, but the perception of a message will be unique. o .Messages may be expressed in a number of ways depending on the purpose of the communication, subject/topic to be related, the needs of the recipient and your own personal skills in communication. In the process of encoding you will select bits of information and organise them for transmission. o *The medium you choose for transmission will depend on the message to be conveyed, location of the recipient, speed, convenience and degree of formality required. o .Decoding is the interpretation of the message that has been received. It will have been successful if the recipient has absorbed the message and assigned to it the meaning which the sender intended. o o .Feedback (or lack of it) is the response that the recipient sends back to the sender. A key element in the communication process because it enables the sender to evaluate the effectiveness of the message. Feedback may take the form of verbal, non-verbal communication or action, or written messages. o Feedback is the key element that creates a cycle in the communication chain. o 2 types of feedback - positive and negative.
o DEFINITIONS OF COMMUNICATION o Communicate comes from Latin verb communicare, meaning "to make common to many, share, impart, divide." o Communication is best understood when you view it both as a process and a product. o As a process - the transmission and reception of symbolic cues. o As a product or an outcome - shared meaning. o Therefore, communication is the sharing of meaning by sending and receiving symbolic cues. o LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION o Communication can occur on 5 different levels: o .intrapersonal o .interpersonal o .group o .public o .mass communication o 1. Intrapersonal Communication - Simply stated, it is communication with yourself (prefix intra- means "within"); typically silent. - Much intrapersonal communication is geared toward a specific, conscious purpose - evaluating how we are doing in a particular situation, solving a problem, relieving stress, or planning for the near or distant future. - Both as public speakers and as audience members for other's speeches, we communicate intrapersonally a great deal. - Key features - a continuous process of self-feedback and that it involves only one person. o 2. Interpersonal Communication - It occurs between people, usually two of them. Sometimes called dyadic communication (Latin for 'pair') o 3. Group Communication o It generally takes place with three or more people interacting and influencing each other in pursuit of a common goal. A sense of cohesion or group identity is essential to any definition of this level of communciation. o 4. Public Communication - It occurs when one person speaks face to face with an audience. That audience may be small as your creative expression class, or as large as the masses of people who fill stadiums and other public areas to hear certain speakers. - Key characteristics - a more one-directional flow of information, a more formal feeling than other types of communication discussed so far. Whether the audience is as small as a class of 20, or as large as a convention assembly of 2000, or a congregation of 200, 000, public communication always involves one person communicating to an audience that is physically present. o 5. Mass Communication - Once the audience becomes so large that it cannot be gathered in one place, some type of print or electronic medium - newspaper, magazine, radio, or television, among others - must be placed between speaker or writer and the intende audience. - This physical isolation of speaker and audience severely limits the possibilities for spontaneous interaction between them. In fact, an important characteristic of mass communication is that audience feedback is always delayed. o Second characteristic - the method of message transmission can become very important. This is because different medium will determine the different sizes and types of audiences your message reaches.
o COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATION o 1. Linear Model of Communication - The earliest models devised by scholars show three basic elements of communication - a speaker sending a message to a listener. o SPEAKER --------------------message---------------------àLISTENER o Speaker = sender = source = encoder o 2. Interactive Model of Communication o Once communication scholars began to see the limitations of this early linear, three-element model, they began to add other components. Today, the most widely accepted model of communication has seven elements. o To the three elements already mentioned - speaker, message, listener - we add channel, feedback, environment, and noise. o Channel - or medium, refers to the way the message is sent. In public speaking, the medium is vibrations in the air between speaker and listener, set in motion by the speaker's voice. o Voice and words are not our only media for communication. In fact, communication scholar Albert Mehrabian has estimated that when cues conflict, nonverbal cues are more important than verbal cues in communicating our feelings or attitudes to others. o TOTAL FEELING = 7%verbal feeling + 38%vocal feeling + 55%facial feeling o Mehrabian's formula means that any time you communicate with someone, the majority of the feeling behind your message is carried by visual elements such as facial expression, eye contact, gestures, and movement. o More than one-third of your message is carried paralinguistically i.e. by vocal elements such as rate, volume, voice quality, and changes in pitch level. Your actual words carry less than 10 percent of the message about how you feel. o As a public speaker, you must learn to manipulate and control all three of these channels - visual, vocal, and verbal. Public speaking, like every other level of communication, is more complicated than just saying the right words. o Pp 13 Figure 1.3 o Feedback - a second element added to that preliminary model of communication. It includes all messages, verbal and nonverbal, sent by listeners to speakers. They are verbal and nonverbal responses between communicators about the clarity or acceptability of messages. o Environment - the third element need to be added to make a more accurate model of communication. 2 factors shape a communication environment : o .the occasion during which communication occurs, and o .the physical setting or site where communication occurs. o Noise - anything that distracts from/interferes with effective communication, and some form of noise is always present. 3 types of noise: - Physical noise are distractions originating in the communication environment. - Physiological noise originates in the bodies of communicators. - Psychological noise originates in the thoughts of communicators.
1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o Differences Between Public Speaking & Conversation o Public speaking is more highly structured. o Public speaking requires more formal language. o Public speaking requires a different method of delivery. o THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS o Why Communicate? o ...Because communication is a process that enables us to learn about other people through sharing of experiences and passing information. This is important in establishing and building relationships, whether they are domestic, social, business and professional. o The Communication Chain o Communication is a chain of events which has 5 distinct dimensions: o .the sender has the need to communicate o .the need is translated into a message o .the message is transmitted o .the receiver gets the message o .the receiver interprets the message and provides feedback 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o Let's look at these in turn... o The need to communicate is intrinsic/inherent, but the perception of a message will be unique. o Messages may be expressed in a number of ways depending on the purpose of the communication, subject/topic to be related, the needs of the recipient and your own personal skills in communication. In the process of encoding you will select bits of information and organise them for transmission. o The medium you choose for transmission will depend on the message to be conveyed, location of the recipient, speed, convenience and degree of formality required. o Decoding is the interpretation of the message that has been received. It will have been successful if the recipient has absorbed the message and assigned to it the meaning which the sender intended. o o Feedback (or lack of it) is the response that the recipient sends back to the sender. A key element in the communication process because it enables the sender to evaluate the effectiveness of the message. Feedback may take the form of verbal, non-verbal communication or action, or written messages. o Feedback is the key element that creates a cycle in the communication chain. o 2 types of feedback - positive and negative. 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o DEFINITIONS OF COMMUNICATION o Communicate comes from Latin verb communicare, meaning "to make common to many, share, impart, divide." o Communication is best understood when you view it both as a process and a product. o As a process - the transmission and reception of symbolic cues. o As a product or an outcome - shared meaning. o Therefore, communication is the sharing of meaning by sending and receiving symbolic cues. 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION o Communication can occur on 5 different levels: o .intrapersonal o .interpersonal o .group o .public o .mass communication o 1. Intrapersonal Communication - Simply stated, it is communication with yourself (prefix intra- means "within"); typically silent. - Much intrapersonal communication is geared toward a specific, conscious purpose - evaluating how we are doing in a particular situation, solving a problem, relieving stress, or planning for the near or distant future. - Both as public speakers and as audience members for other's speeches, we communicate intrapersonally a great deal. - Key features - a continuous process of self-feedback and that it involves only one person. 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o 2. Interpersonal Communication - It occurs between people, usually two of them. Sometimes called dyadic communication (Latin for 'pair') o 3. Group Communication o It generally takes place with three or more people interacting and influencing each other in pursuit of a common goal. A sense of cohesion or group identity is essential to any definition of this level of communciation. o 4. Public Communication - It occurs when one person speaks face to face with an audience. That audience may be small as your creative expression class, or as large as the masses of people who fill stadiums and other public areas to hear certain speakers. - Key characteristics - a more one-directional flow of information, a more formal feeling than other types of communication discussed so far. Whether the audience is as small as a class of 20, or as large as a convention assembly of 2000, or a congregation of 200, 000, public communication always involves one person communicating to an audience that is physically present.
1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o 5. Mass Communication - Once the audience becomes so large that it cannot be gathered in one place, some type of print or electronic medium - newspaper, magazine, radio, or television, among others - must be placed between speaker or writer and the intende audience. - This physical isolation of speaker and audience severely limits the possibilities for spontaneous interaction between them. In fact, an important characteristic of mass communication is that audience feedback is always delayed. - Second characteristic - the method of message transmission can become very important. This is because different medium will determine the different sizes and types of audiences your message reaches. 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATION o 1. Linear Model of Communication - The earliest models devised by scholars show three basic elements of communication - a speaker sending a message to a listener. - SPEAKER --------------------message---------------------àLISTENER o Speaker = sender = source = encoder o 2. Interactive Model of Communication o Once communication scholars began to see the limitations of this early linear, three-element model, they began to add other components. Today, the most widely accepted model of communication has seven elements. o To the three elements already mentioned - speaker, message, listener - we add channel, feedback, environment, and noise. 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o Channel - or medium, refers to the way the message is sent. In public speaking, the medium is vibrations in the air between speaker and listener, set in motion by the speaker's voice. o Voice and words are not our only media for communication. In fact, communication scholar Albert Mehrabian has estimated that when cues conflict, nonverbal cues are more important than verbal cues in communicating our feelings or attitudes to others. o TOTAL FEELING = 7%verbal feeling + 38%vocal feeling + 55%facial feeling o Mehrabian's formula means that any time you communicate with someone, the majority of the feeling behind your message is carried by visual elements such as facial expression, eye contact, gestures, and movement. o More than one-third of your message is carried paralinguistically i.e. by vocal elements such as rate, volume, voice quality, and changes in pitch level. Your actual words carry less than 10 percent of the message about how you feel. o As a public speaker, you must learn to manipulate and control all three of these channels - visual, vocal, and verbal. Public speaking, like every other level of communication, is more complicated than just saying the right words. 1 SPEAKING IN PUBLIC - AN INTRODUCTION o Feedback - a second element added to that preliminary model of communication. It includes all messages, verbal and nonverbal, sent by listeners to speakers. They are verbal and nonverbal responses between communicators about the clarity or acceptability of messages. o Environment - the third element need to be added to make a more accurate model of communication. 2 factors shape a communication environment : o .the occasion during which communication occurs, and o .the physical setting or site where communication occurs. o Noise - anything that distracts from/interferes with effective communication, and some form of noise is always present. 3 types of noise: - Physical noise are distractions originating in the communication environment. - Physiological noise originates in the bodies of communicators. - Psychological noise originates in the thoughts of communicators.