Public Speaking Peer Evaluations

If you're teaching a public speaking class, you know that being a great speaker is about more than just what you sound like in the front of the room. It's about knowing what makes a good speech and what makes a poor speech-- and being able to incorporate these ideas into your own work. Whether you're teaching middle, high school, or college students, you need to be able to teach your students how to analyze other speeches effectively. One great way to do this is to play examples of great public speeches in your class and have your students discuss them. However, you also have a great source of sample speeches for your students to analyze right in your classroom-- their peers' speeches! By listening to the work of their peers and evaluating good points and bad points, they have to think critically about the criteria for the assignment and the qualities of an excellent speech. In addition, they also have to work on their listening skills-- an area in which most students in this high-tech world need practice. Public Speaking Peer Evaluation Comparison Papers For this paper, have students compare at least two of their fellow students' speeches-- one they feel is fairly strong, and one they feel is fairly weak. Alternately, you can also assign a third speech that they feel is of average quality. Another option is to assign students to evaluate their own speech and to compare it to 1-3 of their classmate's speeches. If you want, you can build requirements into this speech that make it necessary for students to be in attendance and paying attention. For example, you can require that students analyze three speeches that are given during three different class periods. Of course, it goes without saying that this assignment needs to be anonymous. Assure your students that no one but you will see the contents of this paper, and stick to that. Nonetheless, you'll want to discourage your students from using this as an opportunity to write nasty things about their peers. This assignment needs to be guided by a list of specific questions. If you ask your students to evaluate each other's speeches without asking them to evaluate specific criteria, many of them will only pay attention to delivery. The questions you ask will vary based on the level of student, and will also vary depending on what you are emphasizing most on this assignment. Here are some of the questions you might ask