Coursera

Speaking and Presenting: Poise (Coursera)

Offered by University of Michigan,

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.

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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

Course 1 of 4 in the Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting Specialization

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Poise
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.

WEEK 2
Teachers, Comedians, and the Perfect Pause
We’ll follow up the “Speaking Stories” we learned about last week with a new, research-filled section called “Speaking Studies.”

WEEK 3
Rhythm: Concept & Stories
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.

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.

Go to Class

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