Penn State Greater Allegheny
Department of Communications
Spring 2016 CAS 100A
Effective Speech
Instructor: Michael Vicaro
Email: mpv2@psu.edu
Office: 106A Main
Office hours: M 9:30 am-11 am and T/Th 9:30 am-10:30 am and by appointment
Class Meetings T/Th 10:35-11:50
Class Room: Crawford 102
This course seeks to prepare students to compose and deliver speeches for a variety of
situations and purposes with eloquence, confidence, and conviction. The course will
guide students’ development in the art of public speaking through a wide array of
classroom activities including writing and speaking exercises, speech analysis, and
several formal speech performances. The course will also include a focus on using
presentation software to develop artful, engaging slide presentations.
Goals
Upon successful completion, students will have:
1) Composed and performed a series of speeches of significance
2) Gained a deeper proficiency with principles of persuasive reasoning.
3) Developed responsible research practices
4) Enriched vocabularies for thinking critically about the centrality of public speech to
political and community life.
Your goals:
Each student will be asked to submit a set of personal learning objectives. What goals to
you wish to achieve? What problems do you wish to overcome? What one or several
topics would you like to speak about in your formal presentations?
Texts
You are not required to buy a book for this course. I will provide a number of articles
and handouts to be posted on Angel. I will also place several speech textbooks on
reserve at the library for those who wish to consult a text. There is also a good free online
text available here: http://www.publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html
Requirements/Assignments:
1. First Speech (10%): This assignment will ask you to compose and perform an
original speech that provides some introduction to your life, interests, character, or
beliefs. A list of topics will be provided. For those with public speaking experience,
you should take this as an opportunity to do something creative and daring. If you
have little experience, your goal should be simply to get up there and speak. The
assignment is lightly weighted and I will provide extra help for those with special
concerns. DUE: 1/19 & 1/21
2. Midterm speech (20%): This assignment will ask you to persuade your audience to
make a judgment about some issue of consequence. Your topic may be drawn from
your academic and/or professional interests or you may take on some controversial
policy or value-question. Your speech should demonstrate creative invention of
audience appeals; excellent research, clear and orderly arrangement of your ideas in
good form; artful writerly style with example, imagery, and cadence; and engaging
extemporaneous delivery. DUE: 3/1 & 3/3
3. Epideictic speech: (15%): This assignment will ask you to produce a special kind of
speech designed to praise virtue or shame vice. You may choose from a variety of
approaches, including writing a eulogy for someone who has passed, a wedding
speech, a speech of praise for a person, institution, event, group, or idea, or a speech
shaming/blaming someone for wrong-doing. The focus here should be on great
writing and passionate delivery. DUE: 4/5 & 4/7
4. Final Speech (40%): The final speech for honors students will be a 15-20 minute
lecture and accompanying paper focused on a topic related to the student’s academic
or professional interest. The lecture will be composed and delivered as a multi-media
presentation using the audio/visual capacities of presentation software (e.g.
PowerPoint or Prezi). The presentation will take place in a new venue (an auditorium)
before an audience including some relative strangers (friends, colleagues, faculty,
etc). Due: TBA (finals week, on or around 5/3)
5. Homework and Short speeches (15%): Each student is personally responsible for
the quality of discourse in our class and failure to participate productively on a daily
basis will result in a quantitatively poor participation grade as well as a qualitatively
poor class experience. Each class will feature some speaking, writing, and discussion
activities and/or homework designed to improve your speaking effectiveness.
a.
In addition, each student will be ask to compose and deliver a set of short
speech assignments designed to emphasize some elements of the speechmaking process. These assignments provide an opportunity to get feedback
from the class and instructor without the stress of a heavily weighted
evaluation. I will provide a list of topics and ideas. Each student is expected to
complete at minimum two short speeches: one short speech before the
midterm speech and one after the midterm speech. Additional speeches may
be recommended by the instructor or requested (for extra credit) by the
student. Due: throughout the semester
Attendance:
 Active attendance is crucial for your personal success in this course and a
responsibility you have to your fellow students. Students who miss a course meeting
without providing prior notification will not receive credit for in class participation or
any other associated assignment.
 Students that arrive late or leave early will not receive full attendance credit for that
day.
Additional Resources:

Helpful websites to check out: www.ablongman.com/pubspeak;
www.americanrhetoric.com; http://rhetoric.byu.edu/
Students with Special Needs
If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you
are encouraged to contact your instructor and Victoria Garwood (Frable 102,
vkg2@psu.edu), the campus’ Disability Contact Liaison. Please do so at the very start of
the semester so that we can provide appropriate support.
Academic Integrity
Students in this course will be expected to comply with Penn State’s Policy on Academic
Integrity. Academic integrity is the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open, honest and
responsible manner.
Academic integrity is a basic guiding principle for all academic activity at The
Pennsylvania State University, and all members of the University community are
expected to act in accordance with this principle. Consistent with this expectation, the
University's Code of Conduct states that all students should act with personal integrity,
respect other students' dignity, rights and property, and help create and maintain an
environment in which all can succeed through the fruits of their efforts.
Academic integrity includes a commitment by all members of the University community
not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Such acts
of dishonesty violate the fundamental ethical principles of the University community and
compromise the worth of work completed by others. Any student suspected of violating
this obligation will be required to participate in the disciplinary processes outlined in the
guidelines on Academic Integrity. www.psu.edu/dept/ufs/policies/47-00.html#49-20