Great Books to Help in Speech Class.

Rational
I chose these books because they teach students how to speak well. Having the ability to develop and deliver a good speech is a skill that everyone needs to have. Leaders throughout our history have been able to do great things because of their ability to speak and speak well. Language is power and being able to speak well can lead one to accomplish great things within their lives.



· Title: The Lost Art of the Great Speech : How to write on-How to Deliver It
· Author: Richard Dowis
· Illustrator: Richard Dowis
· Publisher: AMA Publications
· Copyright: 2000
· ISBN#: 0-8144-7054-8
· Genre: Bibliography
· Library Location: TTU Library

Summary: "Splashy slides, confident body language, and a lot of eye contact are fine and well. But if a speech is rambling, illogical, or just plain boring, the impact will be lost. Now everyone can learn to give powerful, on-target speeches that capture an audience's attention and drive home a message. The key is not just in the delivery techniques, but in tapping into the power of language.
Prepared by an award-winning writer, this authoritative speech-writing guide covers every essential element of a great speech, including outlining and organizing, beginning with a bang, making use of action verbs and vivid nouns, and handling questions from the audience. Plus, the book includes excerpts from some of history's most memorable speeches--eloquent words to contemplate and emulate."
Personal Comments:
I think it is important for one to be able to deliver a speech in such a way that it moves someone to take action. Language is powerful and the way we deliver it can be the difference in someone actually listening to us or ignoring what we have to say completely. This book does a great job in guiding one through the speech writing process and then delivering it in the proper way. I also enjoy the speeches from our country’s past.
Suggested Use in Classroom
This book is a great outline in creating and delivering speeches. After reading this book students will have the ability to outline and organize a good speech. It also gives them knowledge on how to deliver the speech properly. Students will learn that things such as body language as well a tone of voice is very important when giving a great speech. This book can serve as a student’s guideline through the semester.


· Title: The World’s Greatest Speeches
· Author: Lewis Copeland (Editor) Lawrence W. Lamm (Editor) Stephen J. McKenna (Editor)
· Illustrator: None
· Publisher: Dover Publications
· Copyright: 1999
· ISBN#: 0-486-40903-1
· Genre: Bibliography
· Library Location: TTU Library

Summary
Nearly 300 speeches from nearly every historical era: Socrates, Julius Caesar, St. Francis, Martin Luther, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Fulton J. Sheen, Barbara Jordan, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela, Earl of Spencer, and many others offer provocative themes, historic parallels, and memorable quotations.
Personal Comments
The world has seen many good orators over the years. This book is a collection of great speeches given by these great orators. Reading these historical speeches allows one to follow the history of rhetoric and understand the power of a great speech. I think it would be easy to see how leaders lead through the speeches they give. This book is also a great way to tie speech with history to give students an overlay of knowledge.
Suggested Use in Classroom
This book is great for the speech classroom. I would have the students read speeches from different eras of history and analyze them. If we are focusing on persuasive speeches then we could read some well known persuasive speeches focus on what makes them great. Just a good tool to have when showing students what a great speech looks like.

· Title: Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History, Updated and Expanded Edition
· Author: William Safire
· Illustrator: William Safire
· Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
· Copyright: 2000
· ISBN#: 0-393-05931-6
· Genre: Bibliography
· Library Location: TTU Library

Summary
An instant classic when it was first published a decade ago and now enriched by seventeen new speeches, Lend Me Your Ears contains more than two hundred outstanding moments of oratory. This third edition is selected, arranged, and introduced by William Safire, who honed his skills as a presidential speechwriter. He is considered by many to be America's most influential political columnist and most elegant explicator of our language. Covering speeches from Demosthenes to George W. Bush, this latest edition includes the words of Cromwell to the "Rump Parliament," Orson Welles eulogizing Darryl F. Zanuck, General George Patton exhorting his troops before D-Day, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking on Bush v. Gore. A new section incorporates speeches that were never delivered: what Kennedy was scheduled to say in Dallas; what Safire wrote for Nixon if the first moon landing met with disaster; and what Clinton originally planned to say after his grand jury testimony but swapped for a much fiercer speech.
Personal Comments
This is another great book that is loaded with great speeches from different times in history. The book is well written because the author is a former speech writer for presidents of the United States. The book allows one to examine speeches that were given by some of the best orators in history. The thing that sets this book apart is the fact that it contains speeches that were never given by different leaders of the past.
Suggested Use in Classroom
I could use this book in several different ways within the classroom setting. First, it provides many good speeches that can be critiqued by the kids. Second, those same speeches can be taken and broken down into parts so that students can see what good speeches consist of. Last, the speeches that were never given can be looked at and evaluated. Do these speeches lack something that kept them from being used? Are these speeches complete and would they motivate an audience to take action? It would be fun to try and see if the speeches lack anything and if so how could we make them better.

· Title: Public Speaking- An Audience Centered Approach
· Author: Steven A. Beebe and Susan J. Beebe
· Illustrator: Diana Stephenson
· Publisher: Prentice Hall
· Copyright: 1999
· ISBN#: 0-205-29559-2
· Genre: Bibliography
· Library Location: TTU Library
Summary
Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach, Fourth Edition serves as a foundation in speechmaking as it guides readers through every step of the process and narrows the gap between the theory and the real world.
Its distinctive and popular audience-centered approach emphasizes the importance of analyzing and considering the audience at every point along the way, with marginal icons highlighting passages that address audience-related issues. Numerous examples, excerpts, and sample speeches support the instruction, while recap boxes and end-of-chapter activities reinforce and extend the lessons
Personal Comments
This book looks at public speaking from the audience point of view. This is important to me because public speaking is all about the audience. If the audience turns the speaker “off” then all is lost, even if the speech given is full of useful and knowledgeable information. A speaker has to keep his/her audience or the speech might as well be thrown away.
Suggested Use in Classroom
This book would serve as a roadmap to great public speaking. The activities at the end of each chapter can be used as in class assignments to reinforce the material being taught within the book. It would also give the students an idea on how to analyze a speech from the audience point of view.


· Title: Coping With Speech Anxiety
· Author: Joe Ayres and Tim Hopf
· Illustrator: unknown
· Publisher: Ablex Publishing Corp.
· Copyright: 1993
· ISBN#: 0-89391-882-2
· Genre: Bibliography
· Library Location: TTU Library


Summary
Grounded in cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements, speech anxiety is a serious problem for a large number of people and has been found to affect career development as well as academic performance. This book presents intervention procedures that have been developed to help people cope with anxiety associated with each of these sources.
Personal Comments
Many people have a fear of public speaking. Public speaking is a skill that should be mastered because it allows one to communicate effectively in front of a large audience. This book is great for coping with the anxiety that can come along with talking in front of large audiences. Many speech classes focus on writing good speeches and how to deliver them but many times no one thinks about concoring fear of public speaking.
Suggested Use in Classroom
I feel that this book would be a great read for all speech students. Learning why people are scared to speak in front of others help get over the fear and allows one to become better speakers. I would use the techniques taught in this book with my students as they begin giving their speeches to help them be more comfortable in front of others. You can learn how to develop speeches but if you are afraid to give it then all your work is for not.