CMST 101 - The Gallery Walk

The purpose of the Gallery Walk exercise is three-fold.

§ It will give you a crucial opportunity to demonstrate and to “tune” your ability to craft a preparation outline and from that a “key-word” presentation outline.

§ It will give you essential feedback from your audience and the instructor on your topic, your research, and the arrangement of your speech.

§ It will give you valuable insight to your audience; to their values, beliefs and attitudes. It will also allow you to “connect” with your audience in an interpersonal and small group manner, before you address them in a “public” setting. After this exercise you will most likely know each of your classmates.

The Gallery Walk will consist of printing out your speech outline and taping it to the walls of the classroom. These will need to be done as Microsoft Word™ documents, using the Landscape (Page Setup function) rather than the more usual Portrait layout, and typed using the Arial font in size 20 or 24. This will result in seven to ten legible pages that can then be taped together to form the whole outline. In the 20 or 24 Arial font they will be readable from a few feet away.

Each session, volunteer speakers will present, and the remaining class members, split up into groups of 2 and 3, will hear each speaker give their speech, albeit in “draft” form. At the end of 7 or 8 minutes, the groups will shift to the next position to hear a new speaker. Each speaker will have the opportunity to address 3 or 4 groups of their fellow students and get feedback from them.

Each group of students will, at the end of the presentation from each speaker, write their comments on the posted outline. I will also be circulating, to ask questions, to make comments and to write my own suggestions on the posted outlines. Particular attention will be paid to format and arrangement. The speaking style in this exercise, as these are “draft” speeches, will be less formal and more interactive in nature than in your actual informative speeches. We are not expecting finished, “polished,” speeches. We are expecting complete outlines. Your sources pages are not required for this, but you will need to have your cites of those sources in the outline.

This exercise, in its focus on speaking to and with your classmates, will also go a long way toward establishing our speaking community. You will also notice that it will contribute significantly in reducing speaking anxiety.