Teaching Public Speaking Over the Decades

Author Information: Public speaking has always been both a professional and personal interest of mine. My interest began in elementary school with my parents playing cassette tapes of great speakers during long road trips. Those speakers inspired me through their words and I in turn began to desire to inspire others through speech. In high school, I pursued speaking through joining the forensics team in the category of extemporaneous speaking and qualified for nationals twice. Seeing the necessity of effective communication in a military career, I continued to refine my speaking and communication skills and now have the privilege to teach public speaking at the United States Military Academy. After teaching public speaking for several semesters, I was curious what historically has been taught on the subject. Just as there have been cultural changes in America over the past decades, it would stand to reason that the evaluation of what is considered proficient public speaking would change as well. Therefore, I decided to conduct a literature review in hopes of finding treasures of the past to apply to my current public speaking curriculum and to provide insight on how public speaking has changed or stayed the same.