Week 1 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 1 — The Icebreaker: Plan It, Rehearse It, Name One Moment — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Public Speaking Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 1 of the term — measure a rehearsal take, plan your own icebreaker, and explain to a nervous friend why nerves are normal.

This week you learned that communication is shared meaning, that the six-element model maps where meaning gets lost, that nerves are common and manageable, and that the rehearsal loop names one moment at a time. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's shared example, explain each one, plan your own icebreaker, and explain the idea of speaking nerves to someone who has never taken a speaking course. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Speech Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

This week's shared example has two parts, both illustrative and attributed to no one. The first is the lobby announcement: at 8 a.m., a building manager says into the lobby microphone of a busy classroom building, "The north lot closes at noon for repaving; please move your car to the south lot before noon," and half the room misses it. The second is the first take from an illustrative delivery self-assessment for a six-minute speech:

words spoken in 6 minutes: 780
filler words counted ("um", "like", "so"): 12
seconds of eye contact in a 30-second sample: 21
deliberate pauses counted: 9
the one thing to fix: "Pause after the hook instead of racing into the central idea."

Chapter 1 walks through both. None of the take-1 numbers is a target; they describe one take.

Work these four problems, and show how you reached each one:

In the illustrative first rehearsal take, the speaker said 780 words in 6 minutes. How many words per minute is that?
In the same take, the speaker used 12 filler words in 6 minutes. How many fillers per minute is that?
In a 30-second sample of the same take, the speaker kept eye contact for 21 seconds. What percentage of the sample is that?
The course's communication model takes 5 elements from the linear model and 1 element from Schramm's interactional model. How many elements does the model have?

Beside each answer, add one brief explanation, and use your own icebreaker for the parts that ask for it:

Problem 1: say in a sentence what the words-per-minute figure describes and why this course treats it as a description of one take, not a target; then plan your own icebreaker as four keyword beats: a hook, who you are, one detail with a point, and a close. Keywords only, not a script.
Problem 2: practice your icebreaker aloud at least twice. You may record audio only, record video, or speak for a trusted listener who times you; no recording is ever submitted or shared with anyone. Write one self-assessment line that names a moment, not a feeling, and say which delivery method you are aiming for and why.
Problem 3: explain why the take's one thing to fix is feedback a speaker can use, while praise such as "great job, very engaging" is not; then name the one moment you will fix in your own next take.
Problem 4: map your own icebreaker onto the six elements: you as the source, your message, the channel, your receivers, one likely noise and how you will reduce it, and one kind of feedback you will watch for.

Explain it to a non-expert

A friend has been asked to give a short toast at a family celebration and tells you, "I'm dreading it. Good speakers don't get nervous, so I must be bad at this." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, that speaking nerves are common and manageable, offers two of this week's strategies that fit a toast, and names one limit, such as that the strategies make nerves easier to work with rather than making them disappear. Give no medical advice. Explain any course term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible; this message is scored with Problem 4.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker who has to give a first two-minute safety briefing to a new team and asks why their hands shake. Model answer: "Almost everyone feels that before speaking, even people who do it every week, so it doesn't mean you're bad at it. Say your briefing out loud a few times before the meeting, because practicing aloud is what makes the words come easily. Right before you start, take a few slow breaths and pick one friendly face to talk to first. The shaking may not go away completely, but it usually eases once you're past the first sentence or two."

Use that pattern for your friend, with your own wording and examples.

Show how you got each answer. A reader should be able to check every division and every label without guessing which numbers you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single piece of work containing:

the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and the brief explanation the task names for that problem;
your four-beat icebreaker plan in keywords, your self-assessment line, and your six-element map; and
your message to the friend, explaining in everyday words that speaking nerves are common and manageable, with two strategies and one limit.

Keep it to roughly one to two pages. Clear and specific beats long. A recording of your icebreaker practice is never part of the submission; your self-assessment line describes it in words.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, or as a spoken explanation recorded as audio or video of about three minutes with a transcript. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the arithmetic, the planning, the practice, the explanations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator to check the divisions. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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