Oral English and Public Speaking (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Oral English and Public Speaking

The need of training students in our schools in oral English has passed the stage of argument. Since in everyday life we speak hundreds of times as often as we write it is obvious, from the viewpoint of using language as a tool, that training in oral composition is quite as important as practice in the written form. To emphasize written composition more than oral English is, therefore, inconsistent with sound pedagogy.

With training for citizenship as the objective, this book deals with all phases of oral English that lend themselves to more or less formal class instruction, adapted in treatment to the needs of secondary schools. In common usage the term "Oral English" is somewhat elastic. It includes the most elementary forms of spoken language, while "Public Speaking" connotes the more formal relation of a speaker and an audience. Hence, the use of both terms in the title. Notwithstanding the agitation for the incorporation of oral expression in the regular class work in English, no standardization of the content of such work has as yet been effected, as shown by the wide variation of treatment in existing texts on this subject. The present text aims to fix some definite standards; the content and plan of the book, with the reasons therefor, are outlined in the Introduction.

While the needs of secondary schools have been kept primarily in mind, oral English should not, of course, be left for the high school alone, nor in the high school for the teacher of English alone.

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