This part of the book supplements the Public Speaking course, i.e. the study of the effective use of language, with the study of how language itself functions. Thus its significance lies in tracing the uneasy border between rhetoric and grammar. It has been planned as a brush-up for graduate students who are habitually unsure of their grammar and hence uneasy about the force of their speech. In this view, the main task for the students is to systematically develop the quality of the text: linking the parts, rational organization of the material, and effective elaboration of wording.
Each section is a self-sufficient unit aimed at revising a particular skill of presenting in English and including the relevant grammar notes required to fully understand the peculiarities of the language and to improve one's performance. Students are expected to enjoy this review of some challenging grammar concepts accompanied with activities offered at the end of each section.
Though the bulk of our attention is paid to the techniques of effective oral presentation, we will undergo the formal revision of grammar points, which implies the use of language with regard to its correctness or social propriety, giving the rules or means of showing the relation between words. No doubt, its importance still rises when one regards speaking from one's career viewpoint or simply wants his or her spoken message to produce a stronger effect on the listeners. For instance, as early as when introducing oneself, a speaker faces the necessity to make a choice from a great variety of language structures or grammar rules, depending on how formal the situation is or what kind of the audience he or she is going to talk to. Hence the ways of opening a speech can vary from fairly formal to more friendly, and the speaker will choose those that help him or her to feel more comfortable and establish a better contact with the audience.
To illustrate this, let us regard some fragments of the introductory part of an oral presentation[1] and point out the grammatical arsenal one should posses to sound natural:
| Perhaps we should begin. | Modals verbs. | p. |
| Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. | Plural forms of the noun. | |
| My name's | Contracted verb forms. | |
| For those of you who don't know me already | Negation. Relative clauses. | |
| I'm responsible for | Prepositions. | |
| This morning I'd like to be talking to you about | Verb tenses and aspects. | |
| If you have any questions you'd like to ask, I'll be happy to answer them. | Conditional sentences. Interrogative sentences. Verb tenses and aspects. |
Or, when the speaker chooses to sound friendly and less formal, the corresponding message should be supported with the following language tools:
| OK, let's get started. | Complex object with the infinitive | |
| Morning, everyone. Thanks for coming. | Styles of communication. | |
| I'm in charge of | Prepositions. | |
| What I want to do this morning is | Relative clauses. | |
| Feel free to ask any questions you like as we go along. | Complex sentences. Imperative mood. | |
| And don't worry, there'll be plenty of time left over for questions at the end. | Verb forms and aspects. Negation. Participial constructions. |
Of course, this list is far from complete, but it allows one to see that the problems the authors are trying to raise in this book deserve the learners' attention. Indeed, with the general idea being quite understandable, some grammatical flaws can function as the distractions from the subject matter of the speech and indicate the lack of the speaker's concern for language, thus lowering the prestige of the speaker and decreasing the impact on the audience. However, bearing in mind the general goal of our course, in this book we are going to regard grammar rules not in the order suggested by traditional textbooks, but as required by the process of public speaking skills development. Notes on the usage will not tell you the right and wrong way to express your thoughts. The goal is to encourage you to reflect on the choices you make and provide some clues to how you can improve your speech. You have to make the decisions.
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