Leading Your Audience

Leading Your Audience: A Systematic Approach to Public Speaking is a structured, easy-to-follow textbook. It is ideal for use in communications courses such as Public Speaking, Oral Communications, and Rhetoric. While many textbooks focus on theoretical speech concepts, Leading Your Audience gives students practical, easily applicable tools and strategies to achieve the goal of being a successful public speaker.

Leading Your Audience is organized systematically to provide students with a stress-free structure while building their confidence. The book gives numerous practical examples that help students learn to apply the concepts presented to their own speeches. It is written in a clear, concise style to maintain student interest.

The book has eleven chapters. It begins with an introduction to public speaking, including the causes of speech anxiety. It then provides comprehensive coverage of everything from methods of delivery, to organizing and outlining, to persuasive and special occasion speeches. A separate section provides activity forms, self-evaluations, and topic sheets. There is also an appendix with sample speech outlines on a variety of interesting topics.

The material has been classroom-tested, and proven to quickly build students' speech proficiency. Adopters will receive an Instructor's Manual with activities, assignments, evaluation forms, and a test bank.

Laura Arnett Smith received her B.A. and M.S. from the University of Tennessee, where she now teaches Public Speaking in the School of Communication Studies. Over the past ten years she has taught and mentored thousands of students. Professor Arnett Smith has served as a Basic Course Director, supervising lectures and Graduate Teaching Associates. She developed the curriculum used by 13,200 students in over 550 course sections. Her students have won first prize in the university's speech contest seventeen of the last eighteen semesters.