What Did I Learn from My Speech Class?

“Speech,” “speaking,” “speaker”: these are a few of the words that excite me the most. I was taking pictures and videos for my school’s graduating class during my freshman year, and I was amazed by people speaking so confidently during the commencement. Right from the day I saw those speeches, I wanted to be a graduation speaker and speak at my commencement in my senior year. It would be really strange if an English Language Learner (ELL) student talked about his dream of presenting in front of five thousand people because people would probably laugh about it. Luckily, I’ve been a good speaker since childhood, but my speaking skills became a thousand times better after I took a speech class during my senior year in high school. I am able to talk confidently in front of many people and the majority of the credit for this goes to my teacher and my peers from my advanced speech course. I have decided to explain four reasons why everyone should take a speech class during high school and college.

1. It boosts your confidence. I always enjoyed talking in front of people but I never imagined myself talking in front of five thousand people. If I was that confident in speaking during those events, it was just because of my speech class.

2. You can always learn something. I was always super excited to go to my speech class everyday. I always got a chance to learn something new like what a hand gesture or body movement meant. Watching others’ speeches was always the best part because I learned something new from every single conversation.

3. It will help your speech-writing skills. Writing a speech was always a hard task for me. Especially when I used to write persuasive speeches; I would always mess up the writing structure. In my speech class, I got to learn a lot about writing speeches and how everything will impact the audience.

4. It gives you a lot of practice. When we are in a standard English class, we usually have at least one speech. But if you are in a speech class, you will have five to six speeches in a semester, and you will receive a lot of practice.

Advanced speech gave me so many memories and taught me many skills that have improved my public speaking skills. I have transformed from an average speaker to someone who can be a graduation speaker. Not only did I learn how to speak, but I also met so many great people in that class. If you ever get a chance to take a speech class, don’t hesitate to do it.