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WHEN I ask a student loudspeaker what his purpose is, in 9 instances out of ten he answers: " To show about Lincoln" (or " the battle," or " the tariff," or whatever his subject matter happens to end up being). He will not say, "To tell you about Lincoln subsequently," or " To inform them about Lincoln."
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He uses the transitive verb " tell " without a direct object. He does this because he is usually not thinking about his viewers at all; he is definitely considering about himself and his subject matter, and how to obtain it off his chest. He can do this while staring at the roof, or the wall, or out of the windows, and he can do it just as well - probably better - when no audi- ence is present.
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This is not British speaking in public. Nobody can probably speak well when he feels of himself and his subject and ignores his audience.
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He might imagine he is speaking well; he may be expressing himself wonderfully. But gorgeous self-expression is usually not the thing, unless one's stenographer be his single target audience - and I know some people who can place also their stenographers to sleep.
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Not really power to express one's personal, but power to impress one's viewers is the measure of effectiveness in a general public speaker. Good speaking, whether open public or private, is communication.
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The word means the act of sharing something with others; it comes from the Latin con (with) and munus (a business), through communis (common) and communico (to consult or consult with one another).
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In British we add another " with," and say that a loudspeaker communicates with his audience. This dual insistence on the " with " should serve to remind the college student of the common or reciprocal character of the work included in communication ; but of program it doesn't, because in these times of unassociative truth education and abolition of " ineffective " studies like Latin, nothing ever reminds a college student of anything.
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In order to understand this reciprocal quality the student should think of what happens when two persons speak. Both are parties to the conversation; neither is definitely passive; each gives his active attention to the various other, and encounters a sense of direct mental contact with him; and there is a nature of provide and take that is usually by no means lost when one person happens to possess a small even more to state than the additional.
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We are all accustomed to conversing in this way, and most of us carry out it without distress and with reasonable performance every time. We find it simply as easy to talk to two or three, or a fifty percent dozen, so long as the atmosphere is usually that of personal conversation; but the moment someone says " open public speaking " we proceed to items, as if the scenario had abruptly become different and quite unfamiliar.