Most people end up taking a public speaking class in high school or college, but studies show that kids benefit from learning public speaking skills early on in their education. Public speaking classes can help with this.
Why Teach Public Speaking?
Public speaking classes can help your child build confidence, active listening, critical thinking, communication, and persuasive rhetoric. These skills can help your child become a high achiever in almost any profession they choose. More importantly, public speaking skills help shape your child’s character and confidence along with their academic skills and abilities.
Public Speaking Builds Confidence
Confidence is one of those traits that makes a person great in whatever they do. Confidence is inherently different from arrogance. Arrogance usually stems from insecurity. True confidence goes hand in hand with humility and competence. This combination of traits is rare and attractive to employers and friend groups alike. When you teach your child public speaking skills, they learn to speak in a way that conveys competence, but not arrogance. They learn to communicate in a way that engages their peers, commands their attention, and relays relevant information. This helps your child to become effective at communicating, competent in the subject of their speech, and humble yet confident in their approach communicating the information. These skills will help your child to be sure of themselves, which will help them build meaningful friendships and learn the skills they will need to succeed in whatever they choose to do in life.
Public Speaking Builds Active Listening Skills
When you think about the skills your kids will learn when they take a public speaking class, you’re probably imagining everything they will learn while they are standing up in front of a class. And there is a lot to learn from that perspective. However, kids can learn equally important skills when they are sitting in the audience, listening to a classmate speak. Few people really know how to listen well. If we can teach our kids active listening skills early on, it will benefit them throughout their lives. Active listening can help people to have deeper and more meaningful relationships with their friends and family. It can help them soar up the career ladder in the workplace. It could help them become better teachers or mentors. Pretty much any career or life path can be enhanced with the skills of active listening. This is because wherever you are and whatever you do, there will be people to engage with and active listening is a key ingredient to enhancing relationships with people.
In our homeschool group, the kids have presentations in their classrooms after which, the presenter asks if the other students have any questions. Inevitably, first-year students tend to make statements about themselves rather than really asking a question to the presenter. The parents in the room will gently remind the children listening that this is not their turn to present but to ask questions about what the presenter said. The children start to pick up on the fact that they really need to be listening to the presenter if they want to be able to ask a pointed question about the presentation. This is a slightly more advanced form of show and tell, but it really teaches the kids how to actively listen to their classmates. In return, they have students who are actively listening to them when they get to present.
Public Speaking Builds Critical Thinking Skills
Nothing is quite as motivating to kids as peer pressure, and when they have to give a speech on a topic in front of their peers, they really want to know what they are talking about. When you give a child a topic to research and prepare a speech for, they will be motivated to thoroughly research that topic so as not to embarrass themselves during the speech. They will also need to learn to think critically about their topic if they are going to put the information into their own words and communicate to their peers effectively.
Public Speaking Builds Communication Skills
When a child has to speak in front of a group, effective communication skills are necessary. In our homeschool group, the question and answer time at the end of each presentation is key for students learning how to communicate more effectively. Often, students ask questions about something the presenter already communicated. The presenter will sometimes say, “I already said that” and the parents in the room can ask the presenter to re-state or clarify. This helps kids build communication skills early on. When the other students can’t understand what was communicated, it forces the presenter to think about a different way to explain their thoughts so that the hearers can understand.
This is also the case in public speaking courses whether they are online, or in your child’s public or private school.
Public Speaking Builds Persuasive Rhetoric
The art of Persuasion is an underrated skill. Public speaking courses like toastmasters online course help kids craft their ability to persuade others using their own critical thinking skills. There are so many ways to use persuasion, whether that is through data and reasoning, an appeal to emotion, or even comedy. These persuasive skills can translate into negotiation skills, which are essential for successful careers and relationships.
Final Thoughts
You really can’t go wrong with giving your child a little boost in public speaking. Many public and private schools do not offer instruction in specific skills related to public speaking. Many homeschoolers don’t have groups or classes where their kids get to practice public speaking. If this is your situation, you can find excellent public speaking courses taught by accredited teachers in small classes where kids can practice their public speaking and also have access to direct instruction from experts. This is all available at Monster Education.
p.s. Related posts:
Teen Entrepreneur: indigo clothing co. co-founder presents at Entrepreneurship Day
Indigo, Samurai and My Daughters’ Clothing Company
10 Unexpected Gifts from Blogging for the Last Decade
To examine any book more closely at Amazon, please click on image of book.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
My books:
Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
- Starred review from School Library Journal
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Scholastic / Signed or Inscribed by Me
This will make the children more prepared for many public appearances. It develops a lot of skills, so I fully support the initiative of teaching public speaking.