Throughout a student’s high school career as well as the rest of their lives, public speaking is a very important and useful skill to have. . By definition the fear of public speaking, or speech anxiety is called glossophobia. According to www.statisticbrain.com 74 percent of people suffer from public speaking anxiety.

A survey from publicspeakingsuccess.net shows that public speaking is one of the greatest fears that people encounter every day. This fear tops the fear of spiders, heights, confined spaces and even death. Students who fear speaking in front of people might make them less successful than their peers who are equally as smart.

The school offers several classes that help develop public speaking skills. Speech is a class taught by Matt Rund, Jon Colby and Paul Kennedy, that helps students with public speaking skills. If students are unable to fit speech into their schedule they should practice their speech beforehand. Students should visualize how the speech would go and  practice the presentation in front of a small group of friends or family.

Debate is another class being offered next year that focuses around public speaking. Other classes such as mass media give students the chance to practice public speaking by allowing students to talk in the school announcements.

“I’m not very comfortable talking in front of people so I plan on taking speech so that it hopefully helps me get more comfortable and do better on presentations,” freshman Sarah Alrafie said.