GET1008 Public Speaking and Critical Reasoning Review
Also known as GEM2027/GEX1005. Taken in AY22/23 Sem 1 (Face to face lessons, after COVID)
Lecturer: Prof Shobha Avadhani
Workload:
- 1x 1h weekly Lecture
- 1x 2h weekly Tutorial
- 6x Speeches + 6x reflections
- 5x Open Book Quizzes
Speeches (total 50%):
1. Introductory Speech (ungraded) 3 mins: Just introduce yourself
2. Impromptu Speech (ungraded) 3 mins: Given a topic, talk about it at length.
3. Epideictic Speech (graded, 5%) 5 mins: Commemorating or paying tribute to something
4. Informative Speech (graded, 15%) 6 mins: Inform the audience about a topic that you know a lot about without a call to action
5. Persuasive Speech (graded, 20%) 8 mins: Persuade the audience to fix an an issue that is affecting the current audience
6. Responder Critique (graded, 10%) 5mins: A critique on your partner’s Persuasive Speech
Other Weightage Components:
- Reflections (15%)
- Quiz (20%)
- Participation in Tutorials (basically feedback given to other speeches) (15%)
Workload
I felt that the workload is on the lower side, even compared to other GE modules. The main workload of the module was preparing for the speeches, which took an average of 2–3 days each.
Even preparing the speeches was mostly enjoyable to me, as crafting and delivering an interesting and impactful performance was something I really enjoyed. But the stress of deadlines was certainly not fun — in the first half of the semester, speeches had to be delivered every week, and this module probably contributed to the majority of my stress during that time.
The module is really “pure” in its objective in the sense that it mainly consists of 6 speeches and that’s it. Speeches are only around 5 minutes long on average and the rest are mainly fluff — writing reflections, doing quizzes, listening to others’ speeches and providing feedback. I really enjoyed how true this module was to the sole goal of making one a better public speaker, and the assessment structure reflected that. Unlike other GE modules there were no projects, tests, or essays. Just 6 speeches.
Assessment Criteria
But yet, the assessment criteria for the speeches felt too arbitrary and content-focused to my liking. You’d think that a module focused on public speaking would have a large focus on delivery, but the majority of the grading rubrics were focused on making a speech tailored closely to their (specific) requirements. Around only 12%-20% of the marks, for Fluency, Expression & Gesture, Eye Contact, were dedicated to the delivery, and the rest, like Credibility, Audience Analysis, or Call to Action dominated most of the grading. My main motivation of doing public speaking came from my enjoyment of its performative aspects, so the disconnect between how well I thought I performed and my actual grades sometimes came as a form of disillusionment.
This is one of the modules that you take more for the experience, as it’s not easy to score well. The quality of speeches can get quite subjective, so I don’t think it’s too useful to get hung up on grades for a module like this anyway.
Minor Annoyances
Other minor things irked me as well. 4% of the grading, graded on a scale of 1–7 was determined solely by how well you dressed. The requirements for some of our speeches also came across as unnecessarily arbitrary at times.
Our Persuasive Speech had to be about something widespread which is causing a problem to our society at large, and had to contain a call to immediate action that was realistic and effective immediately. As such, it forced a lot of us into rather trite and “safe” topics like climate change, food wastage or social media usage. You can’t convince people to donate blood, for example, because blood donation tends to be limited to blood donation drives. Neither could you talk about the problem of stray cats in HDBs because people don’t see that as a problem. I felt that unnecessarily limiting the scope of many speeches made myself less able to talk about things that I liked to talk about, which further contributed to the stress that I had to talk about something.
Fun Things
I had been fairly negative in this review, so let me talk a bit about the things I liked about the module.
The small class size of 10 students per tutorial was absolutely refreshing. There was probably a bit of luck in it as well, but the tutorial class I got had people who were really unique and full of character. The speeches they made had distinct styles to them, which made them really enjoyable to watch — I found myself wondering how would certain classmates tackle their speeches in their own unique ways.
I especially liked the feedback given in the module as well. Right after each speech, tutors gave comments about what we did well or what we could improve on. Grading was also broken down into different criteria so you could see which parts you did well or did badly, accompanied by a detailed analysis overall. This was a big contrast to the usual communication mods that I did like ES2660 or CS2101, where they simply assessed us without any feedback, leaving me wondering if the purpose of the module was simply to judge us on a scale.
Lecture
The 1 hour online weekly lecture (not compulsory) was mainly about the requirements of the speech if we had to do one that week. If not, I felt that a lot of it were on things that were quite irrelevant for the main assessments in the module, although they were certainly useful and interesting.
We had lectures on how to speak ethically in a global pandemic or speaking in small groups, many of which I felt that could have been more tied more to the module’s assessment structure as a whole to provide relevancy. By the last lecture, we had around ten people despite having over a hundred initially.
We also had 2 industry guest speakers throughout the duration of the module, and they talked about how performative arts like dancing can capture an audience, or about how to give a good business proposal. That was fun as well because industry speakers in modules were mostly limited to CS3217 or CS3216 for computer science modules.
Tutorial
Tutorials were spent mainly doing speeches or listening to others’ speeches on the weeks that we had them. Otherwise, they were just recaps on lecture content, or discussion about the ideas that we had for our speeches.
Overall
This is really a one-of-a-kind module, and I don’t regret taking it. When I had been presenting to a webcam for the past two years, doing a speech in front of a live audience was something that I had not done in a really long time.
It was a visceral experience, and certainly one of the highlights of my semester.