This course is part of the Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting Specialization

Patrick Barry

Offered By

Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting SpecializationUniversity of Michigan

About this Course

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Poise is not some elusive or innate characteristic. It’s a series of choices, all of which can help you better connect with your intended audience. This course will help you identify those choices and teach you how to consistently make them.

Flexible deadlines

Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion

100% online

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Course 1 of 4 in the

Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting Specialization

Beginner Level

No background is needed

Approx. 11 hours to complete

English

Subtitles: English

What you will learn

How to hold the attention of a wide range of audiences

How to project a powerful combination of confidence, competence, and charisma

How to arrange your content in clear, memorable packages

How to use a well-tested suite of rhetorical rhythms to enhance your delivery and linguistic sophistication

Skills you will gain

CommunicationPoiseAdvocacyRhythm

Flexible deadlines

Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion

100% online

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Course 1 of 4 in the

Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting Specialization

Beginner Level

No background is needed

Approx. 11 hours to complete

English

Subtitles: English

Instructor

Patrick Barry

Clinical Assistant Professor of Law

Michigan Law School

66,323 Learners

8 Courses

Offered by

University of Michigan

The mission of the University of Michigan is to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.

Syllabus - What you will learn from this course

Week

Week 1

4 hours to complete

Week 1 | Poise: Vocabulary

Poise is not some elusive or innate characteristic. It’s a series of choices, all of which can help you better connect with your intended audience. This course will help you identify those choices and teach you how to consistently make them.

4 hours to complete

9 videos (Total 23 min), 12 readings, 3 quizzes

9 videos

Hold People’s Attention2m

P-R-O-D-U-C-T7m

Poise2m

The Virtue of Clarity1m

Being in Public1m

Charisma2m

Speaking Stories: LBJ3m

Speaking Stories: Winston Churchill1m

Speaking Stories: RBG50s

12 readings

Meet Professor Barry2m

Teaching Style and Resources10m

Syllabus7m

University of Michigan Survey15m

(Optional) Introduction15m

(Optional) Chapter 1—Poise15m

(Optional) Class Clips20m

Exercise ("Carpool Charisma")25m

Community Engagement Rules3m

Speaking Stats ("Harper's Index")3m

Edit Our Edits10m

Speaking Sagacity10m

3 practice exercises

Low-Stakes Practice5m

Week 1 Review20m

Week

Week 2

3 hours to complete

Week 2 |Poise: Speaking Studies and Speaking Exercises

We’ll follow up the “Speaking Stories” we learned about last week with a new, research-filled section called “Speaking Studies.”

3 hours to complete

3 videos (Total 8 min), 5 readings, 3 quizzes

Week

Week 3

2 hours to complete

Week 3 | Rhythm: Vocabulary

People who have taken our companion course Good with Words: Writing and Editing may remember some of the rhetorical moves we’ll be learning about this week, including anaphora, epistrophe, and the Rule of Three. But even if these techniques are new to you, I hope you’ll soon try to incorporate them into your various speaking opportunities. There are good reasons why everyone from John F. Kennedy, to Margaret Thatcher, to Martin Luther King relied on them to get important points across.

2 hours to complete

10 videos (Total 21 min), 4 readings, 2 quizzes

10 videos

Rhythm 2m

More Saving. More Doing1m

If You See Something, Say Something1m

Parallel Structure2m

The Rule of Three3m

Same, Same, Kind of Different2m

Verbal Technology1m

Women’s Suffrage2m

Slavery1m

Suffrage and Slavery1m

4 readings

(Optional) Rhythm—Chapter 220m

(Optional) Resources: Class Clips15m

Rap Rhythms3m

Good Sentences, Good Speeches ("Hollywood")15m

2 practice exercises

Low-Stakes Practice5m

Week 3 Review20m

Week

Week 4

2 hours to complete

Week 4 | Rhythm: Speaking Studies and Speaking Exercises

Congratulations on making it to the final week of the first course in the series “Good With Words: Speaking and Presenting.” We’ll finish up with some additional material on rhythm and then get a chance to combine rhythm and poise together in a speaking exercise that involves a popular U.S. president, an acclaimed war correspondent, and the 1993 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

2 hours to complete

3 videos (Total 6 min), 2 readings, 3 quizzes

About the Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting Specialization

Suppose you were good with words. Suppose when you decided to speak, the message you delivered—and the way you delivered it—successfully connected with your intended audience. What would that mean for your career prospects? What would that mean for your comfort level in social situations? And perhaps most importantly, what would that mean for your satisfaction with the personal relationships you value the most? This specialization is designed to help you find out. Based on an award-winning course and workshop series at the University of Michigan that has been taken by students training to enter a wide range of fields—law, business, medicine, social work, public policy, design, engineering, and many more—it removes the guesswork from figuring out how to communicate clearly and compellingly.

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Speaking and Presenting: Poise