Doing diagnostics: accounting for progress in student communications and advocacy

Bonnie McAlister (Elon University, USA) considered the speaking characteristics of effective advocates and demonstrated a technique for use in assessing oral communication.

An essential skill of all legal practitioners is their ability to communicate effectively, and yet legal education does not always intentionally do anything to bolster communication effectiveness. The currency of lawyers is proficiency in communicating both interpersonally and presentationally. Therefore, it is incumbent upon legal education to pay attention to the task of developing this proficiency, as successful advocacy is dependent upon it.

One way to monitor progress in this area is by offering diagnostics to assess speaking challenges and highlight speaking proficiency. Current technology facilitates this, so that students may easily and regularly be given feedback on performance, and from that feedback may enhance their performance.

Participants watched a benchmark DVD of a student performance delivered at the beginning of the school term and were then given an evaluation sheet citing various speaking characteristics in order to critique the performance plus a sample written critique. This check sheet, DVD and written critique, when given to a student, serve as helpful feedback on performance, and may be repeated periodically throughout the term at appropriate intervals, so that a student receives and then internalizes feedback and may thereby enhance his/her speaking proficiency and advocacy efforts.

This approach requires equipment likely to be available at most institutions, needs little space (just a room in which to film) and can be accomplished in relatively short sessions of no more than 30 minutes. When students see themselves on video they generally self correct whatever idiosyncratic behaviors and deficiencies that might be getting in the way of their effectiveness. With such an opportunity, coupled with feedback from their instructor, their communication outcomes are bound to be improved.

Sandra Warfield (University of Bedfordshire) reports

Bonnie’s paper gave a valuable insight into improving student performance, useful to anyone involved in oral presentations or mooting.
 
I found this session very helpful – I will change the first few sessions that I spend with our mooting students to allow them to discover their own weaknesses in a non-threatening environment as encouraged in the session. Their first attempt at public speaking will now be recorded and watched in private and not in front of the class. It will be short – just three minutes – and not on a legal topic. The session illustrated that this would be enough for the student to evaluate their own performance and improve dramatically in later sessions with help.

About Bonnie

Prior to joining Elon University School of Law as Executive Coach in Residence Bonnie McAlister was a trainer and program designer at the Center For Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a professor of public speaking and group dynamics at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.

Bonnie presented a paper on The culture of questioning techniques in the classroom at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2009 and also presented at Learning in Law Annual Conference 2007. Her focus has been and continues to be attention to building the confidence of speakers as a means of insuring that their effectiveness is enhanced.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010