The Natural Speaker

by Randy Fujishin

Book Overview

The Natural Speaker is a concise, practical, inexpensive, student-friendly guide to public speaking that explores the basic skills necessary to present a natural, effective, and rewarding speech to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0205946275
• Release Date: January 2014
• Publisher: Pearson Higher Education
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 6.0" x 0.5"

Customer Reviews

The Natural Speaker

I bought this book for a class. I have been very helpful in teaching me to be a better speaker.

Life changing textbook

Not only is this one of the best textbooks that I have ever had to read, but it is one of the best books. It completely changed my perspective on public speaking. I had the pleasure of taking public speaking with Randy Fujishin and he is a wonderful, enthusiastic teacher with a real passion for the subject. I believe that this shows in his book. It really is an easy read. I had family members asking if they could borrow it to read it for fun.

This book helps tremendously

The examples given in this book helped me tremendously in giving a proper speech, it gave wonderful examples and steps to take in order to execute a successful presentation. I recommend this book for anyone who has troubles speaking or has fears of taking a course or speaking in public.

A Very Talented, Passionate, Communicator Shares His Secrets

I've read a lot of communication textbooks over the years since I'm a professor in the field. This is one of the best. Professor Fujishin exudes the passion he talks about in the final two chapters of this book. He is passionate about the topic, the audience (in this case his readers), and he has a healthy self-esteem. All three are necessary for connecting with an audience in a meaningful way, he explains. The author stresses ethics throughout the whole book. It is filled with inspiring quotes. His points are illustrated by anecdotes and personal insights from himself and people he's known. I get the impression that he is truly a nice guy. That comes across in his writing. It's like I know him after reading his book. He touched me to that extend. Now, having said all those positive things, I do have a couple of ideas for improvement. First his citations are weak. In the text he identifies such well known poeple as Abraham Maslow and Alan Monroe, but in most places he talks about "a study." Curious readers want to know "which study." How about a bibliography at the end of each chapter? Another odd thing I found was the fact that he seems to be a Christian who is afraid to mention the Name of Jesus. Why do I get that impression? He cites names of leaders of all kinds of other religions. He even quotes the Bible and talks several times about preachers and church, but there's never a mention of the Name. Just an interesting observation I picked up on. Overall this is a great book. It emphasizes the importance of relationships. Communication is about being "other centered" and the author is a master at following the advice he's advocating.

A "textbook" that is not a traditional textbook.

This book is my most favorite "textbook" since I returned to school to get my AA. This book is not like the traditional textbook-it doesn't put you to sleep after the first 3 pages. Each chapter starts off with a short story that applies to the concepts taught in the chapter. Very amusing stories. After the concept is introduced, the information is broken down into subtopics that are reasonably short. I think this helps the flow of the book. Models are included in the text so if your instructor wants an outline, for example, you have one in the text to refer to. The reading of this book is smooth and easy. I sold my original copy back to my school's bookstore and now I am regretting it. For someone who is working on an AA in speech communication, I'm looking to buy this book again to help me prepare future speeches.