Many people feel anxious about giving a formal presentation or talk in public. In surveys people have ranked the fear of public speaking ahead of such things as financial ruin and even death. Although almost everyone has the ability to speak, being able to express oneself clearly and effectively in front of a group is a talent that definitely needs to be cultivated.

Learning some basic information about preparing and delivering formal presentations can help allay some of the fear involved in public speaking. Studying well-crafted speeches to see how the content is constructed and the message is delivered can also be beneficial.

Effective public speakers can inform, persuade, and motivate people. People who possess and hone their public-speaking skills will have many opportunities available to them.

Places To Go

Allyn & Bacon Public Speaking Website
Designed as a companion to a textbook, this website contains five modules on assessing, analyzing, researching, organizing, and delivering a speech. 

The Forest of Rhetoric
This online rhetoric, provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric. This site is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific terms) and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced for 2000+ years).

Great American Speeches: 80 Years of Political Oratory
This companion website to the PBS documentary of the same name includes speech texts and backgrounds of more than 90 of the most significant speakers of the recorded age--from Booker T. Washington and the suffragettes to the present. The site also includes links to many audio and video samples of these famous speakers as well as lesson plans based on the speeches presented. (Teachers should review the suitability of the speech texts, especially for students under high-school age, as several of the speeches contain language that, while representative of the language and ideas of the time, may be considered inappropriate today.)

Gifts of Speech: Women Speeches from Around the World
Gifts of Speech was created as a result of a college librarian's frustration at the difficulty of finding a copy of a speech by Gloria Steinem, the modern mother of feminism. It is dedicated to preserving and creating access to speeches by influential, contemporary women from around the world. 

Douglass Archives of American Public Address
This site, which bears the name of Frederick Douglass, one of America's greatest speakers, is an electronic archive of American oratory and related documents. Speeches can be searched by speaker, title, issue, or chronologically. 

The History Place: Great Speeches Collection
This collection of important historical speeches includes speeches ranging from Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech delivered in 1775 to Bill Clinton's "I Have Sinned" speech in 1998. Each speech is prefaced with commentary establishing the historical context of the speech. For speeches delivered in modern times, excerpts or entire speeches can be downloaded for listening. 

Presidents
This site contains information and documents related to the speeches, writings, and biographies of all the presidents of the United States.

Mark Twain's Speeches: A Guide to Online Resources
Read some of the many speeches of celebrated American author and noted humorist Mark Twain at this site. 

Ask.com: Demosthenes
Meet Demosthenes. He was the Greek who was a great orator. Find out if the story about him putting pebbles in his mouth to improve his diction is really true.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
Spend some time with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Part of the success of his long presidency can probably be attributed to his famous Fireside Chats and to the public’s perception of him reaching out and speaking to them directly. This site has full text of his chats starting in 1933.

The Churchill Centre
Meet Winston Churchill and read many of his famous speeches and quotes that helped rally the spirits of the people of the United Kingdom during the dark days of World War II.

George Bernard Shaw
Get to know George Bernard Shaw, the Irish dramatist. He wrote a play called Pygmalion about a linguist named Henry Higgins who turns a common flower girl named Eliza Doolittle into a lady by teaching her to speak more correctly. The play became the musical, My Fair Lady.

Museum of Broadcast Communications
Remember Fred Rogers. His cozy style of communicating with children endeared him to children of all ages.

Anxiety Coach
Meet the Anxiety Coach. Through cyberspace, he can provide you with exercises to help alleviate your fear of public speaking.

History Channel: Great Speeches
Hear speeches by Hank Aaron, Irving Berlin, Charles Lindbergh, Charles de Gaulle, and other notable individuals.

Medal of Freedom: Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients Apollo 13 Crew
Meet Jim Lovell, John Swigert, and Fred Haise, the crew of Apollo 13, and read their speeches as they received the U.S. Medal of Freedom.

Royal Windsor Website
Like romantic speeches? Then get to know Edward VIII of England and read his abdication speech in which he relinquished the crown of England to marry the woman he loved.

Lou Gehrig
Get acquainted with Lou Gehrig and listen to his farewell speech. Discover why, on July 4, 1939 , he said, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”

Will Rogers
Meet Will Rogers. Read the speeches, newspaper columns, and quotes of this irascible American humorist.

History and Politics Out Loud
This website, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with Michigan State University, is a searchable archive of politically significant audio materials for scholars, teachers, and students. 

Speech & Transcript Center
This is a great source for finding transcripts of speeches as well as audio/video resources related to the speeches of prominent government, business, and historical individuals.

Toastmasters International
Learn the 10 tips for successful public speaking.

McGraw Hill Public Speaking Website
Humor and quotes to work into your speech-of just for your own enjoyment.

You Don't Have to Imagine Their Underwear! Seven Tips to Becoming a Dynamic Presenter
Learn 7 helpful tips to improve your public speaking skills.

Bartlett ’s Quotations
The Quotations Page
Browse through thousands of famous quotes to get ideas for your next speech.

KidsHealth: Laryngitis
Find out what to do if you “lose your voice” because you have to be able to speak up in order to keep an audience attentive.

History Channel: Speeches
“Hear the words that changed the world.”

Phobias Glossary
Laliophobia is fear, anxiety, or extreme self-consciousness that arises from speaking in public. Identify any other worrisome phobias that you may have. Hemaphobia is an abnormal fear of the sight of blood, alektorophobia is an abnormal fear of chickens, and alliumphobia is an abnormal fear of garlic that may extend to a variety of plants characterized by their pungent odors, including onions, leeks, chives, and shallots.

Yahooligans Jokes
Locate a great joke for your next speech since humor can be an effective element of public speaking. How about this one----A farmer was milking his cow. He was just starting to get a good rhythm going when a bug flew into the barn and started circling his head. Suddenly, the bug flew into the cow's ear. The farmer didn't think much about it, until the bug squirted out into his bucket. It went in one ear and out the udder.

American Rhetoric
Browse through an online searchbank of over 5000 notable American speeches.

Digital History: Famous Historic Speeches
Digitally thumb through famous American speeches.

Lesson: Creating a Clear, Accurate, Engaging Presentation
This is a lesson plan to help students create engaging presentation.

Lesson: Making an Effective Presentation
Lesson plan adaptable to grades 2-12.

• Brown, Marc. Arthur Meets the President. Little, Brown & Company, 1992.
• Carnegie, Dale. How to Develop Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking. Simon and Schuster, 1976.
• Krannich, Caryl Rae. 101 Secrets of Highly Effective Speakers: Controlling Fear, Commanding Attention. Impact Publications, 1998. 
• Lucas, Stephen E. The Art of Public Speaking. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2000.
• Maisel, Eric. Fearlesss Presenting: A Self-Help Workbook for Anyone Who Speaks, Sells, or Performs in Public. Watson-Guptill Publications, 1997.
• Noonan, Peggy. On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech with Style, Substance, and Clarity. HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.
• Papajohn, Dean. Toward Speaking Excellence. University of Michigan Press, 1998.
• Sterling, Bryan B. and Frances N. Sterling. Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers, and Writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers. M. Evans, 1996.
• Walters, Lilly. Secrets of Successful Speakers: How You Can Motivate, Captivate & Persuade. McGraw-Hill Companies, 1993.