Public Speaking is a fundamental skill that all to often stands between people and success in life. Most careers require some level of public speaking ability, whether it involve making a proposal to your group or management at work, making a sales presentation, teaching people how to use a product or system, or making a presentation to your employees as a manager. We will sometimes face other public speaking situations, including teaching young people how to do something, making our opinion known at a public meeting, or commemorating special events. This course is oriented to helping you become a more effective and confident speaker. Many of the skills that are required to be an effective public speaker are applicable in other situations as well, and this course will also focus on providing listening, critical thinking, and research skills that will be valuable to you throughout your life. Closer to home, this course fulfills the General Education requirement in Critical Thinking.

Daly, J. A. and Engleberg, I. N. (2004). Presentations in Everyday Life: Strategies for Effective Speaking. Houghton Mifflin; ISBN: 0618260161. ''(Note that new copies of the text include a CD that may be helpful to you in completing the course.)''

My usual practice is to make my lecture notes directly available to the class via the Internet. To the extent that it is possible to do so (and I will endeavor to make it possible). I will display those lecture notes during class. You can print them out later. You may be able to print them out before class, but I don't guarantee that you will. I known for changing my lecture notes right up to the beginning of class (and sometimes during class), however. The version posted at the end of class can generally be considered to be reliable.

	Weight	Description
Exam 1	7.5%	Classic Question and Answer testing, conducted about a third of the way through the semester. Covers all of the material covered in first third of the course, including classroom discussion and textbooks. It will almost certainly be graded on a curve.
Exam 2	7.5%	Classic Question and Answer testing, conducted about two thirds of the way through the semester. Covers all of the material covered in the second third of the course, including classroom discussion and textbooks. It will almost certainly be graded on a curve.
Index Card Assignments	7.5%	Index card assignments entail doing a small assignment involving thought or observation, but usually with the restriction that the output of the assignment (your answer or observation) must fit on one side of a 3x5 card. There will be roughly 10-20 such assignments. These will not be graded. Simply turning them in on time nets the points, but deductions will be taken if it is obvious that a particular assignment wasn't taken seriously. Index Card Assignments will frequently be used in the course of class discussions.
Demonstration Speech	7.5%	A 3 to 5 minute speech that uses a visual aid to demonstrate something. The most likely topics will be how to do something, but there will be some latitude. An outline that specifies your sources is expected.
Informative Speech	15%	A 4 to 5 minute informative presentation, delivered extemporaneously, that teaches or informs the class about something without advocating any particular position. This speech should be carefully researched. An outline, including sources consulted, is required.
Persuasive Speech	20%	A 5 to 7 minute persuasive speech that addresses a genuinely controversial topic. You should advocate a question of fact, value, or policy. Some topics do not lend themselves to persuasion (e.g. eat a good breakfast every day) because they are not a matter of any real controversy).
Ceremonial Speech	15%	A 3 to 5 minute ceremonial presentation. An outline, including sources consulted, is required.
Critical Reaction Paper	10%	A 3 page written paper that performs a rhetorical analysis of an out-of-class speech that occurs at some point in the semester. I will provide a number of options during the term.
Participation	10%	You should bring two questions to class each day based on the readings. Write them on one side of an index card. Lectures will often take the form of a conversation in which you ask questions and we discuss the answers to those questions. This portion of the grade will be based on your preparation and ability to both ask good questions and participate in answering them. If I feel strongly that the class is not prepared, I may give a quiz that will count as a part of this portion of the grade.
Total Grade (based on above)	100%
Effort Bonus	Up to 10%	An optional addition, based on good and enthusiastic participation, interest in subject matter, etc. Basically, if I think your grade, as computed above, doesn't reflect what I think you learned in the course, I have the option of raising your grade by as much as a letter grade. I rarely use this bonus and almost never award a full letter grade. There is no guarantee I will give any of these points to anyone.

There are several layers of content associated with this course, including:

• the texts and other readings.

• Lectures, which will extend and often diverge from the readings.

• Class discussions

• tests

• speeches and a critical reaction paper

All of these elements contribute to the overall learning experience of this class, and you will necessary miss out on these layers if you miss class. The most important of these is your grade. My experience (and the experience of others) is that students who miss classes attain much lower grades than those that do, and the more they miss, the worse they do. This is true even in classes where grades are fairly automated, as is often the case in exam-based large lecture classes.

While I do not grade based on attendance per se, I do take attendance (I am required to by law) and will only accept index card assignments or questions at the time I collect them in class.

Bottom line: Be here.

I will notify the class if, for any reason, I will not be there. I have never missed a class without notifying the class of it by some means. I do not plan to start now. You are not free to leave until either I dismiss class or the class period ends. It does not matter if you believe there is an amount of time after which you are free to leave. If you aren't there when I arrive, you weren't in class that day.

Bottom line: Normal time limits on my arrival do not apply. If I'm not there yet, take out your questions and start discussing the readings.

I have caught a number of students attempting to pass off other people's work as their own. Such behavior is unacceptable in any classroom, and I won't accept it in mine. My usual practice will be to zero any assignment on which a student has been found to be cheating and consult with the department chair on what other actions may be appropriate

Examples of cheating include:

• Duplicate test answers. Test answers should always be in your own words (e.g. not copied out of a book or off of someone else's test paper).

• Presenting somebody elses words as if they were your own. Any time you present someone elses ideas, there should be an indication of who the original author was in the form of a citation in the text and a reference at the end. Any time you use their words directly the quote should be set apart with quotation marks or a block quote indicator. I encourage you to look at and cite content from a wide variety of sources, but the content of your term paper should be in your own words.

• Unreferenced term paper content. Where, in the course of writing a term paper, you present the ideas of others, you must indicate where they came from with a reference. This is true even when you have stated the ideas in your own words or if the ideas or their sources seem obvious.

Bottom line: Write in your own words and reference the ideas you use to the sources you read them in.

Students who have a disabling condition which might interfere with their ability to successfully complete this course are encouraged to speak to me confidentially. I will be happy to cooperate in identifying alternate means of demonstrating such mastery where there is a demonstrable need.

Bottom line: I'm here to help.

It is your responsibility to ensure that all assignments are submitted by the due date. I will reduce the grade on an assignment by 5% for every class period by which it is late.

If you have a question I encourage you to ask it in class. There are no stupid questions; only answers that didn't need to be. If you don't know the answer to a question it is likely someone else is curious as well. Please ask. The worst that can happen is that I defer my answer to a meeting after class or during office hours.

If you have a problem in the class I encourage you to contact me as quickly as possible. Several means of contact are listed at the top of my SUNY Oswego home page, including telephone, e-mail, and instant messenger. I also maintain regular office hours. Note, in particular, that I will not grant an incomplete for the course unless you talk to me about it in advance or I am aware of conditions which would make it impossible for you to do so.