The royal road to great speeches: an evaluation of a Public Speaking Course for ESL Learners

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. To the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. - Jerry Seinfeld, American comedian, actor and writer Public speaking can be intimidating for native speakers, not to mention second or foreign language learners [1]. Public speaking anxiety, a kind of communication apprehension, is common among Asian ESL students, including those at the tertiary level [2, 3, 4]. This problem may stem not only from their cultural and social upbringing which shapes their perceptions of the stereotypical conventions of public speaking, but also from their linguistic incapability to handle a speech genre which is distinctive from the more frequently received academic speaking training. Different from other English courses offered for Social Sciences students of the University of Hong Kong which are heavily writing-oriented, Great Speeches: Rhetoric and Delivery, an English public speaking course, aims to expand the variety of students’ English language repertoire. Using this course as the basis of evaluation, a study is carried out to explore Chinese ESL university students’ psychological and linguistic needs and major challenges in becoming a competent public speaker in English. Data will be collected through questionnaire survey and individual interviews with students. Findings will be triangulated by in-class observations of psychological and linguistic changes among individual students within a 12-week semester. While this course tilts towards a speaking focus, it is felt by course developers that successful mastery of a speech genre should be accompanied by students’ ability to exercise both spoken and written literacies. This explains the inclusion in course materials of guiding students to the writing of a speech critique, in addition to constant exposure to and practices of various speech types throughout the course. It is hoped this presentation fulfils two pedagogical aims – 1) how teachers may incorporate unconventional elements in a public speaking course for ESL learners, and 2) how ESL learners’ psychological and linguistic needs in public speaking can be addressed, potentially reversing the longstanding misperception held by many ESL learners that they do not naturally come with the qualities of producing great speeches. Keyword: ESL, Public speaking, Psychological and linguistic needs References: [1] McCroskey, J. C., Fayer, J. M., & Richmond, V. P. (1985). Don’t speak to me in English: Communication apprehension in Puerto Rico. Communication Quarterly, 33, 185-192. [2] Lucas, J. (1984). Communication apprehension in the ESL classroom: Getting our students to talk. Foreign Language Annals, 17, 593-598. [3] Jin, S. (2009). A study on college students’ English public speaking anxiety and its related factors. Research in Medical Education, 11, 1432-1435. [4] Mak, B. (2011). An exploration of speaking-in-class anxiety with Chinese ESL learners. System, 39, 202-214