Speech Communication
Speech Communication
Speech Communication
The benefits of good speech communication are clear. It can help you learn, make
decisions, enjoy yourself, and succeed in your chosen career. The eight basic skills for becoming
an effective communicator, as listed; are also clear. With these factors in mind, you may ask why
you should take this course to practice something you have been doing every day for years? Why
not just continue speaking, keeping these eight factors in mind?
• Do you sometimes have trouble choosing the best words to express your ideas?
• Do people ever ask you to repeat something because they could not hear or understand
what you said the first time?
• Have you ever been asked to give a speech or act in a play and refused out of timidity?
• Have some of your in-class reports over the years fallen a bit flat because of the way you
presented them?
• Do you sometimes feel like your friends do not listen to what you say?
• Do you have difficulty remembering a speaker's main points several hours after hearing a
speech?
1. Sincerity Effective speech communicators must be sincere. That is, they must
themselves believe in what they say. Other people must believe they mean what they say
in order for communication to be successful in the long run.
4. Listening Effective speech communicators must know how and when to listen. At
least half of the oral communication process involves listening. Occasionally you may
talk to yourself, but most often you expect someone to be listening when you speak.
Effective communicators know they may learn more during their listening time than
when they are speaking. Good listening is often neglected, but a good speaker will
remember this important "flip side" of the speaking process.
8. Goal Setting Effective speech communicators will generally be able to reach certain
goals. When an effective speaker presents information about a topic, the receivers will
almost always know more about the topic after listening than they did before. If a skilled
speaker tries to convince an audience to accept his or her solution to a problem, the
listeners will generally be partially or fully convinced.