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Ariel Bryan

Mrs. Stanford

ENG 231

20 December 2017

Public Speaking: Vital to High School, Jobs, and Adulthood

Imagine a young child going into an average day of school. Everything seems perfectly

normal as their young classmates pass them in the hallway. As they put their lunchbox in their

locker, they realize that they forgot to do one part of their homework, which was practicing and

perfecting their speech for their first presentation. They frantically pace throughout the hallway

as they work up the courage to walk into the classroom and speak in front of their peers. They try

so hard to think of what to say, but all that comes to their brain is nothingness. Their mind is

completely blank, full of the fuzziness that most hear when they zone out. The child finally goes

into the room, flabbergasted that they cannot think of what to say. Sadly, public speaking will

not get better for the child unless their parents seek out help for them.

According to “To study the effectiveness of occupational therapy intervention in the

management of fear of public speaking in school going children aged between 12-17 years” by

Nazia Ali and Nagar Ruchi, the fear of public speaking is named glossophobia, and if affects

over 75% of the population, along with this being considered in some ways an anxiety disorder

form the article “Re-Thinking Anxiety: Using Inoculation Messages to Reduce and Reinterpret

Public Speaking Fears”(Jackson, 2017). If this 75% does not seek out some sort of help, it could

affect the person even more in adulthood. Consider the following:

1. Childhood fears are very common and it is well known that the objects of these
childhood fears are tied to specific developmental phases.
2. It is quite a common problem and relatively intense.
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3. Literature showed that over 85% of the children reported that their fears interfered with
their daily activities and prevented them from doing things they would like to do.
4. The fear of public speaking can be socially debilitating, and is often cited as a primary
reason why someone is unable to advance in his or her career. (Ali, 2013)
The fear of public speaking can affect anyone. If schools were to expose children to public

speaking at a younger age, along with how to improve at public speaking, it could turn their lives

and futures around. Something as simple as knowing how to word a sentence correctly could be

the difference between receiving a job to someone’s pleasing with a well paying income and

receiving a low paying job with no autonomy to choose someone’s hours, relentlessly wasting

their life away to make just enough for their family. The idea of learning about communication

and public speaking in high school is something that could benefit anyone, throughout future job

interviews, speeches, and even everyday life.

The idea of being able to give a speech is vital to progress with jobs, being social with

friends, and much more. Whether it is something as big as going in for an interview or as small

as giving a toast for the bride and groom at their wedding, there is absolutely no way that

someone can get around giving a big speech at some point in their life. When growing up, most

will not develop the average speech delivery necessities. The place to turn this around in during

someone’s school years. If kids aren’t taught how to give a proper speech in high school, it most

definitely will affect them negatively in their later years. In the article titled “Public Speaking

Anxiety as a Function of Sensitization and Habituation Processes” by R. R. Behnke, readers are

able to see the basic facts on what high school students struggle with the most in the area of

public speaking. Throughout the article, readers are given 3 specific weaknesses that almost

every single high schooler deals with.

Research indicates that high-school students may not be receiving effective

instruction in public speaking, which would benefit them academically,
personally, and professionally (Morreale, Osborn, & Pearson, 2000). The current
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study evaluates the effectiveness of high school public speaking instruction in

English language arts classes in a school district in the Midwest. Following a
conventional qualitative content analysis approach, the study yielded the
following three themes: (a) a lack of effective instruction in speech development,
(b) a lack of effective instruction in speech delivery, and (c) a lack of effective
assessment of speech delivery.(Behnke, 2004)
If teachers do not give their students a chance to do something as vital to a high schooler’s life as

giving a speech more than once in a blue moon along with stating their strengths and weaknesses

based off of these three main factors, the average high schooler will not take the time to help

themselves out by giving speeches in their free time.

An important factor that can help people with a fear of public speaking is by changing the

mindset of the presenter before they present. According to “A Test of

Communication-Orientation Motivation (COM) Therapy” by the authors J. Ayres, T. Hopf and

E. Peterson, the two main types of mindsets for someone in the situation of giving a speech is a

performance oriented mindset and a communication based mindset. Although close in similarity,

a performance oriented mindset is the idea of how the performance piece of the speech went and

thinking that the audience is evaluating how their performance went, while a communication

based mindset is thinking that the main goal of their speech is to show the audience what they

know. During a performance based mindset speech, someone is more likely to think that if they

mess up, even is it really isn’t even noticeable to the rest of the audience, they will be negatively

graded. However, if someone were to have a communication based mindset, they would act

normally and give out the rest of their information the way that it was meant to be given(Ayers,

2013). Considering this, most with some form of a public speaking fear probably think in a

performance based mindset. If these mindsets were to be acknowledged, shown through example

and maybe taught to students during school, it could change high school student’s abilities to
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present, therefore giving them better grades overall and maybe helping out a little with college,

let alone adulthood. If high school students learned about the different mindsets of public

speaking during their school years, they would be able to at least know the difference of

mindsets, and could keep that in mind when public speaking.

Along with this, something that helps tremendously is being exposed to speeches by

giving more of them. During the time giving a speech, most with the fear of public speaking go

through all different sorts of phases of anxiety, along with much more ups and downs with their

rate of anxiety. In the article titled “Public speaking anxiety as a function of sensitization and

habituation processes” by Ralph R. Behnke and Chris Sawyer, readers are given specifics on

when someone’s speech anxiety usually gets higher and lower.

In the present study, it was hypothesized that (1) changes in (1) state anxiety from
rest to the beginning of a speech (sensitization), in (2) changes in state anxiety
during the first minute of the speech presentation (habituation 1), and in (3) state
anxiety during the last minute of the speech presentation (habituation 2) are all
significant predictors of college students’ state anxiety during public speaking.
Results indicated that both sensitization and habituation 1 were significant
predictors, together accounting for 68% of the variance in overall state anxiety
scores during speech performance. Changes in anxiety during the last minute of
the speech (habituation 2) did not contribute significantly to the prediction of
overall state anxiety. Educators need to adopt a variety of classroom techniques to
help students reduce initial sensitization and to foster early habituation in public
speaking practice.(Behnke,2004)
If teachers are aware with these certain things, they can make their students feel more

comfortable while still pushing them to be the best public speaker that they can be. Something

that would be extremely helpful as well is if teachers were to be informed of certain words that

correlate with anxiety, specifically in the public speaking spectrum. As seen in the block quote

above, some of the main words that are juxtaposed with public speaking anxiety are sensitization

and habituation. To summarize, habituation is the idea that if someone is exposed to something
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so much, they will stop having such a harsh emotional response. To fit in the shoes of a teen with

glossophobia, if they were to somehow expose themselves to speeches and giving speeches

more, their anxiety would start to lower over time. Sensitization, however, is the idea of

becoming better at something by using habituation. Habituation would help with getting rid of

someone’s public speaking anxiety, while sensitization would help them become a better public

speaker. If teachers were to know about these words and their definitions along with putting

them into practice with their high school students, things could take a turn in the public speaking

industry. Teens would be exposed, along with growing more confidence, becoming more

vulnerable, losing their anxiety, and becoming a better public speaker. Overall, taking a little

time out of a classmates day, even if it was only once a month, could change that person’s life

around.

Extracurriculars, such as speech and debate, can help with adulthood and public speaking

as a whole. Being able to create a speech, picking a topic, and finalizing certain details all on

your own constructs an idea of how a speech should be set up. This can be used in everyday life

with speeches that you might have to do, say, in work. According to an interview with Canton

South’s speech and debate competitor Skylar Dent, speech and debate is something that allows

students to work on their public speaking skills, along with eliminating the novelty of public

speaking to make it easier to do. Students have a greater confidence through “faking it until you

make it” and it also creates a stronger work ethic through practice(Bryan and Dent, 2017). At an

everyday speech and debate tournament, students wake up extremely early in the morning and

dress in blazers, pencil skirts, and bowties to give a seven to ten minute speech three to four

times that day (depending on how many rounds there are) about certain topics that they are very
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passionate about. There are usually around seven to nine people in a room depending on how

many competitors are in the room and if there are observers in the round as well.

According to an observation by Ariel Bryan at the 2017 Annual Perry High School

Speech and Debate Tournament, hundreds of students showed up to the school because the

tournament was so well known. Students would recite their speeches to their fellow competitors,

teammates, coaches, and even walls if there wasn’t anyone to do their speech for. Teenagers

would do their speech frantically over and over in hopes to get first in their rounds(Bryan,

2017).There are so many different speech categories to choose from, so that literally anyone can

do speech and debate, whether they write their own speech or put several different sources

together to create an overall topic that they feel could change the world, using an excerpt from a

movie or play, or even debating with another group of people over this year’s political topics.

Speech and debate is an amazing example of something that a person could try out to help with

their fear of public speaking. Because speech and debate is such a competitive

extracurricular(especially in the Canton District), it forces competitors to work harder and harder

on their speech to create a piece that will be better than others, overall increasing their

experience in public speaking along with creating a better work ethic. Although all have to give

up their weekends and most have to give up some time to create a speech, it will make a lasting

impact in anyone’s life. The amount of time that could be spent sleeping during weekends is

worth giving up when the impact is so vital.

Some may believe that these tricks and extracurriculars might not be as necessary as they

seem to be. There are plenty of jobs around the world that do not use public speaking on an

everyday basis, other than the rare time that someone talks to their coworker as they pour
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themselves a steaming cup of coffee. Take someone that works as a mailman for example. Other

than the occasional hello to a community member outside(that really isn’t needed other than to

be polite), a mailman doesn’t have to communicate with anyone other than that on an everyday

basis. However, during their job interview, this person would need at least some sort of basic

communication skills, along with keeping the idea of flow and transitions in mind to make their

interview the best it could be. Other than their job, public speaking is still around this person

every single day, such as going to the grocery store and communicating with the cashier, Public

Speaking is a vital thing that all people should learn about at a young age. Without it, the fear of

public speaking will grow and grow, and will be harder and harder to fix. If someone were to

learn at a young age, it would be much easier to fix.

In article from Hsiang-Ann Liao titled “Examining the Role of Collaborative Learning in

a Public Speaking Course”, some differentiations are shown between a professional public

speaker compared to a person with glossophobia. Someone with less of an experience with

public speaking usually reacts with words such as “my thoughts become confused and jumbled

when I am giving a speech, using high quality supporting material is often problematic for me”,

and “while giving a speech I get so nervous, I forget facts I really know”, while someone with a

great amount of experience usually expresses it as “I feel relaxed while giving a speech, I am

able to use language that is extremely clear”, along with “I know how to cope with anxiety

before delivering a speech” and I” know the etiquette of delivering a speech. I am confident

about my ability to conduct audience research”(Liao, 2014). Although it is hard to go from

someone with public speaking anxiety to a great public speaker, it is not impossible. As long as

students are exposed by the teacher taking certain days and working just on someone's
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presentation or teens taking it into their own hands by doing something such as a club that

infuses public speaking into their activities or something dealing with speech and debate, teens

will become more fluent and overall good students. Sadly, if they are not exposed to these, they

might be missing out on benefits in their everyday life, such as the happiness of winning a

speech tournament, the small talk they have with someone along the street, bonuses in the

workplace, and much more.

Work Cited

Ali, N., & Nagar, R. (2013). To study the effectiveness of occupational therapy intervention in

the management of fear of public speaking in school going children aged between

12-17 years. ​Indian Journal Of Occupational Therapy​, ​45​(3), 21-25.

Ayres, J., Hopf, T., & Peterson, E. (2000). A Test of Communication-Orientation Motivation

(COM) Therapy. ​Communication Reports​, ​13​(1), 35.

Behnke, R. R., & Sawyer, C. R. (2004). Public speaking anxiety as a function of sensitization

and habituation processes. ​Communication Education​, ​53​(2), 164-173.

doi:10.10/03634520410001682429

Bryan, Ariel N. “Observation at the 2017 Annual Perry Speech and Debate Tournament.”

Canton, 2017.

Bryan, Ariel N, and Skylar Dent. “Interview with Speech and Debate Competitor Skylar Dent.”

2017.

Jackson, B., Compton, J., Thornton, A. L., & Dimmock, J. A. (2017). Re-Thinking Anxiety:

Using Inoculation Messages to Reduce and Reinterpret Public Speaking Fears.

Plos ONE​, ​12​(1), 1-18. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0169972

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Kahl, D. H. (2014). High School Public Speaking Curriculum: Assessment Through Student

Voice. ​Qualitative Research Reports In Communication​, ​15​(1), 51-58.

doi:10.1080/17459435.2014.955592

Liao, H. (2014). Examining the Role of Collaborative Learning in a Public Speaking Course.

College Teaching​, ​62​(2), 47-54. doi:10.1080/87567555.2013.855891

Ariel Bryan

Mrs. Stanford

ENG 231- Annotated Bibliography

20 December 2017

Annotated Bibliography

Ali, N., & Nagar, R. (2013). To study the effectiveness of occupational therapy intervention in

the management of fear of public speaking in school going children aged between

12-17 years. ​Indian Journal Of Occupational Therapy​, ​45​(3), 21-25.

Throughout the article titled “To study the effectiveness of occupational therapy intervention in

the management of fear of public speaking in school going children aged between 12-17 years”

by Nazia Ali and Ruchi Nagar, a test was created to show the difference between people of all

ages that had anxiety about the idea of public speaking. A study was shown that, surprisingly, as

high school students graduate and become adults, their fear of public speaking becomes worse.

In this study, people of all ages were used to see if they could get over, or at least somewhat help

their public speaking anxiety. Each person was given ten one hour sessions of relaxation in the

office, along with exercises at home. After this, they were given five forty five minute sessions
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of Desensitization. 15 minutes were used for relation training, 10 minutes focused on creating an

anxiety hierarchy, and the last 20 minutes were used for visualized scenes to create a relaxing

environment for the patient.

Ayres, J., Hopf, T., & Peterson, E. (2000). A Test of Communication-Orientation Motivation

(COM) Therapy. ​Communication Reports​, ​13​(1), 35.

In the article titled “A Test of Communication-Orientation Motivation (COM) Therapy” by John

Ayers, TIm Hopf, and Elizabeth Peterson, readers are shown that the way people think about

public speaking affects how they speak publicly. If they are in a negative mindset, it generates

public speaking apprehension. This article focused on two main types of oriented mindsets- a

performance oriented perspective, and a communicative oriented perspective. If someone were to

have a performance based perspective over a communicative oriented perspective, they would

focus on how someone likes the presentation aspect of their performance, while if someone were

to have a communicatie oriented mindset, they would keep going and focus on their facts and

their information rather than looking to the audience for an evaluation of their performance.

Behnke, R. R., & Sawyer, C. R. (2004). Public speaking anxiety as a function of sensitization

and habituation processes. ​Communication Education​, ​53​(2), 164-173.

doi:10.10/03634520410001682429

Throughout the article titled “Public speaking anxiety as a function of sensitization and

habituation processes” by R. R.Behnke and C. R. Sawyer, people are shown factors of when

college students are worried in their speech, for example, beginning of a speech, during the
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first minute of the speech presentation, and during the last minute of the speech presentation. A

recent study shows that if certain things are kept in mind, such as habituation(to do something

so much that the harsh emotional reaction goes away), and sensitization(doing something so

many times until someone gains more experience, therefore becoming better at it.)

Bryan, Ariel N, and Skylar Dent. “Interview with Speech and Debate Competitor Skylar Dent.”

2017.

Throughout the interview titled “Interview with Speech and Debate Competitor Skylar Dent.” ,

the interviewee asks Dent about how Speech and Debate has changed her and how it can change

others as well. Dent brings up important factors, such as how speech and debate cretes better

public speakers, better work ethic, and becoming more confident in yourself as well as your

public speaking. It persuades people to join Speech and Debate because of the important and

vital benefits it has for everyday life.

Kahl, D. H. (2014). High School Public Speaking Curriculum: Assessment Through Student

Voice. ​Qualitative Research Reports In Communication​, ​15​(1), 51-58.

doi:10.1080/17459435.2014.955592

In the article titled “High School Public Speaking Curriculum: Assessment Through Student

Voice” by H. D. Kahl, readers are shown what students have a hard time doing when they have

social anxiety and public speaking anxiety. The main things that are stated throughout the article

that students deal with when having public speaking issues such as this are a lack of effective
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instruction in speech development, a lack of effective instruction in speech delivery, and a lack

of effective assessment of speech delivery.

Liao, H. (2014). Examining the Role of Collaborative Learning in a Public Speaking Course.

College Teaching​, ​62​(2), 47-54. doi:10.1080/87567555.2013.855891

In the article titled “Examining the Role of Collaborative Learning in a Public Speaking Course”

by H. Liao, readers are given lists to show the differentiation between an experienced public

speaker and a less experienced speaker. Through the article, the experienced public speaker

mainly shows that they are confident in their work and in their performance of their speech,

while the other is not good with their flow, transitions, and how they stand and give their speech

to a crowd. Through this, readers are able to put themselves into the shoes of the person giving a

speech and use this list to show if they feel confident in their speech and how they present it.
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Interview

Ariel Bryan

Mrs. Stanford

ENG 231- Interview

20 December 2017

Interviewee Ariel Bryan- AB

Interviewer- Skylar Dent- SD

Setting- The setting was via email. The questions were sent and then answers were sent back to

the interviewee.

AB- What are some of the benefits of speech and debate in high school?

SD- For one, it eliminates the novelty of public speaking making it vastly easier to do in class

presentations and similar things. It also creates a strong work ethic because of the practice that is

required.

AB- Is there a difference in teenagers that are in speech and debate versus in no extracurriculars?

If so, what are some of the differences between them?

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SD- I believe there is a slight difference. Speech and debate is an academic extracurricular,

resulting in more work and practice time. Whereas teenagers who don't partake in

extracurriculars, in general, don't have to worry about that aspect of time management.

AB- Do you think that something as simple as talking in front of a crowd could help with

something such as a teenager’s confidence?

SD- In some aspects yes. Speech and debate kind will of force someone to act confident if they

want a good score. It's a prime example of the phrase "fake it till you make it." Because if the

person sticks to it and puts enough effort into their content, they'll make it. Resulting in genuine

confidence rather than it being faked.

AB- Is the idea of public speaking something that should be focused on more in high school?

SD- Yes, public speaking can be more useful than just class presentations. Jobs and colleges use

public speaking consistently as well so the thought of it being ignored in high schools is kind of

unsettling.

AB- Will speech and debate help teenagers later in life, such as job interviews and such? If so,

how?
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SD- I would like to believe so, yes. Since speaking is something literally everyone uses, the skill

developed during speech and debate tournaments can translate to other important things in life.

Colleges and business corporations like soft skills, such as public speaking and work ethic that is

developed with speech and debate. Creating a fundamental skill that can be and is consistently

used throughout one's life.