The technique of direct practice, or assigning speeches to students without much preparation, practice or guidance, is a useful technique in many situations. First, direct practice can act as a pretest, a way of evaluating new students' speaking abilities. Second, it can help students get over anxiety and stage fright, which are problems that can ruin even an impressive, prepared speech. Third, this technique is suitable for high-level students who have joined a speaking class to eliminate flaws in their speaking through feedback from the teacher and other students.
Educating students how to organize and write an exceptional speech is a useful tool for most beginner-level and intermediate-level courses. Those students who do not have much experience giving speeches often need to be shown how to organize a speech so that the speech catches and holds the audience's attention. At higher levels, teachers can use this technique to help students add humor, hooks, and transitions into their speeches.
Many speech classes use this teaching technique to help students improve the deliveries of their speeches. Teaching delivery involves imparting knowledge on how to use body language, gestures, and appropriate speaking postures. When teaching delivery, teachers should educate students about time management and its uses in accentuating the points of a speech. Delivery is often one of the most important techniques for advanced public speaking classes, in which students already have obtained strong speech writing skills and intend to increase the persuasiveness and entertainment value of their speeches.
Since the advent of computers, speech presentation programs have become popular and even essential tools for public speakers. Hence, most professional and academic speakers need to know how to use these programs, as well as how to integrate graphics smoothly into their presentations. A teacher who emphasizes the graphical sidekicks to a presentation teaches public speech like a computer science teacher would: the students learn how to design slides for their presentations. Students then may present with the aid of their slides, the teacher providing feedback about the proper integration of slides and graphical aids.