Students taking the UIC Barcelona Degree Course on Education have been giving Service-Learning Workshops to improve Public Communication in education centres that have revealed the shortcomings of their students with regard to public speaking in Catalan, Spanish and English.
To be able to give these classes, the Education students underwent prior training in public speaking through a collaboration established with our university's Faculty of Humanities. The project was named “Public speaking: scholastic success, personal development and social cohesion” and was set up in early September with the support of "la Caixa" Foundation.
There were two parts to the project programme this year; a first one during which the future teachers were trained how to teach the classes and a second through which they passed on keys points to acquiring the skills necessary for delivering a speech. There was also time for the primary, secondary and high school pupils to put the knowledge they had acquired into practice and demonstrate their newfound confidence and poise when needing to speak in public.
This activity, coordinated by UIC Barcelona lecturer Maria Teresa Fuertes, benefits both the university students giving the class in terms of teaching practice as well as those receiving the tuition.
