Public Speaking

Public speaking anxiety is a problem for many people. Some say that it is the number one fear of Americans over death. There have been many studies done in the general field of public speaking anxiety. I am going to review three articles that touch on various issues surrounding public speaking anxiety. The first article looks at student's memories of speeches they have given. The second article looks at how public speaking anxiety affects speech preparation. The third article looks at how speech anxiety changes due to audience pleasantness and familiarity.

The first article is entitled "Communication apprehension and implicit memories of public speaking state anxiety. In the study, their subjects were 44 undergraduate students (22 males, 22 females) that were taking a required basic speech communication class. Each student gave a short two-minute speech to a classroom of 20-25 students. The speeches were videotaped and later played back and reviewed by the instructor. Directly after giving their speeches, the students were asked to fill out Spielberger's (Speilberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1969) STAI (A-State) scale, which asks the student how he/she felt while giving the presentation. They also filled this out several weeks before the speech, on how they felt about public speaking in general. Then they were asked to fill out the scale after class. The results showed that recollections of state speaking anxiety decrease over time.

The second article is called "Speech anxiety affects how people prepare speeches: A protocol analysis of the preparation processes of speakers." This article was written by J. Daly, A. Vangelisti, and D. Weber. They begin by telling the reader what a serious problem public speaking anxiety is. They took fifty-one undergraduate students who were enrolled in a large introductory lecture class on communication. They completed a measure of public speaking anxiety five weeks before the project. They randomly selected student from the class and came up with a group that represented the norm in terms of age, race, and gender. Each student was asked to prepare a speech in front of observers and speak out loud