Students' attitudes towards public speaking as a school subject

Štefica, Antonija. (2018). Students' attitudes towards public speaking as a school subject. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Phonetics. [mentor Pletikos Olof, Elenmari].

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Abstract

The present paper discusses students’ attitudes towards public speaking as a school subject. The aim of this paper was to raise awareness about the importance of this type of education, as well as to introduce Public speaking as a subject to a vaster number of schools. In the first, the theoretical part of the paper, an array of relevant definitions and explanations regarding rhetoric, teaching and attitudes are displayed, with an emphasis on the realities of teaching public speaking in Croatian schools in comparison to examples of its teaching worldwide. Relying on theoretical part, three main hypotheses were created, with the first one being scarce knowledge of rhetoric as a discipline and low perception of the variety of its possible uses. The second hypothesis stated that the subject of Public speaking could help develop various communication and speaking skills, but could also help with personal growth. The last one stated that through subjects that belong to social sciences and liberal arts one was provided with more possibilities for the development of the communication and speaking skills compared to subjects of the science group. For the experimental part, a questionnaire was created and distributed in six secondary schools of the Zagreb Countywere Public speaking is taught, to then be filled out by 155 participants. After the results were analyzed, the first hypothesis was refuted, while the other two were confirmed. The students who attend the subject, and those who do not, showed that their knowledge and perception of the wide range of applicability of the rhetorical knowledge they could acquire from the subject were anything but scarce.

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