Speak up

To produce well-educated, well-rounded students, you need to provide them with speaking as well as writing skills. And these skills are not particularly natural. Everyone needs help with them.

Not only do we spend considerable time communicating, communication skills are also essential for personal, academic, and professional success.

In a report on fastest growing careers, the US Department of Labour (1995) had stated that communication skills will be in demand across occupations well into the next century.
Good communication skills fuel self-confidence and enable a person to exert more control over his or her life. Such a person knows how to effectively research, conceptualise, organise, and present ideas and arguments. There is an ever-increasing body of evidence that echoes the importance of communication skills.

Some vow facts….

One-third of a person's time on the job is spent working in groups or teams and attending meetings or preparing for meetings.

Engineering leaders ranked communication skills to be more important than technical skills. A US national survey of 1,000 human resource managers identified oral communication skills as valuable for obtaining employment as well as for successful job performance.

Fundamentals of public speaking

The basics include more of a how-to "formula" course, which covers basic speech writing and delivery "mechanics". Students demonstrate their understanding of those mechanics by presenting a variety of speeches.

Qualities of your instructor:

Teaching a Fundamentals of Oral Communication course requires the instructor to have a broad, deep understanding of the field of communication including its history, theory, research and techniques. This course, which includes a public speaking component, requires a well-trained communication professional to guide students through the various contexts and applications of communication.
— Excerpted from The Case for Fundamentals of Oral Communication, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 29:153-162, 2005. By Richard Emanuel

Alabama State University, Montgomery, Alabama, USA
- Article's references can be found in: A Rationale for the Basic Course:
- Fundamentals of Oral Communication vs. Public Speaking

News for medical students

Doctors need good communication skills too. Harvard Medical School recently surveyed more than 2,000 patients about their clinical visits; poor communication emerged as the most important factor affecting patients' trust in their doctors and as the most likely reason for dissatisfaction and cause for switching physicians.

- The writer is a research scholar, trainer and
academic consultant