What Is a Public Speaking Course?

A public speaking course teaches you to speak clearly, persuasively, and with impact across settings—presentations, negotiations, interviews, and even everyday communication. You learn how to structure a talk (opening, argument, close), tailor your content to the audience, and use voice and body with intent. You also practice core rhetorical tools—examples, metaphors, and storytelling—to surface complex ideas quickly and land them with clarity. Through hands-on exercises and actionable feedback, you grow confidence, tighten your reasoning, and strengthen your executive presence. Pitch Experts’ presentation training is designed to develop presentation skills end to end. Below, we show exactly how we build them in practice.

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Classic Rhetoric, Modern Context

The art of persuasion isn’t new. Ancient orators knew that arguments alone don’t move people. Without credibility, emotion, and a clear structure, even strong ideas fail to compel. The recipe is unchanged. What’s new is the toolkit. Today, rhetorical mastery lives inside modern presentation craft—timeless foundations reinforced by visual and technical capabilities. In other words, today’s public speaking course is a presentation training program that operationalizes classic rhetoric.

Classical Rhetoric: The Science of Persuasion

When people hear “public speaking course,” they often picture drill work and stage practice. In antiquity, rhetoric was far broader: the discipline of persuasion—built to help a speaker not just present and inform, but influence, inspire, and move a group to act. A modern public speaking course is the 21st century evolution of that craft, extended with current technology and visualization to fit corporate communication, high‑stakes meetings, and executive forums.

It Didn’t Start Today

Coaching‑style presentation training focuses on pragmatic outcomes: a product presentation, a company overview or a pitch deck. Since the goal is real‑world delivery, classic rhetoric rarely gets much airtime. Still, Pitch Experts’ presentation training tracks directly with Aristotle. In Rhetoric, he defines three levers of persuasion—logos (logic), pathos (emotion), and ethos (credibility). That same triad drives today’s business communication—from board updates to sales meetings and investor pitches—and it’s built into Pitch Experts’ presentation training. Here’s how it maps.

Step by Step

Aristotelian rhetoric outlines five phases—the method ancient speakers used to prepare for public speaking, typically political or civic addresses. That five‑step process all but forecasts how modern presentation training is built.

Heard the term Inventio? It’s Latin, yet we’re still on Aristotle, whose influence extended well beyond antiquity into the Latin Middle Ages. Inventio—“invention”—covers the strategic groundwork of a speech: gathering information, surfacing the arguments, and defining the core messages. In our presentation training, this maps to the slidewriting module, where participants learn to distill their point and craft the copy that appears on each slide. Concise. Expressive.

Strategy First

The next station in classical rhetoric is Dispositio—the structure of the speech. In a modern presentation training, that’s the storylining module one‑to‑one: this is where strategy takes shape and the logical spine for the most important information emerges. As in a historical public speaking course, you don’t have to start that strategic scaffolding from scratch today either. Storylining transfers best‑practice “rhetorical architectures” and argumentation methods such as the Pyramid Principle and SCQA. The Pyramid Principle gives the speaker a robust, systematic logical structure, while SCQA (Situation, Complication, Question, Answer) applies to nearly any interactive business setting.

Where Pathos Comes From

After Inventio and Dispositio, classical training turned to Elocutio (style of speaking). Today, style is less about grammar and more about modern business communication: authentic voice, clarity at speed, and a distinct visual language. In our sequence, storylining secures logos—the logical flow that makes a message defensible. Then storytelling builds pathos—the emotional lift that makes it memorable. We teach how to weave narrative into analysis so the data breathes: a customer moment that frames the stakes, a founder origin that anchors credibility, or a case vignette that makes risk tangible. Storytelling converts dry statistics into meaning, boosts recall, and triggers emotion that deepens engagement.

We pressure‑test tone, pacing, and specificity. We replace generic claims with concrete proof points, swap passive phrasing for active verbs, and use analogies to simplify technical content without dumbing it down. This is where a public speaking course starts to feel like leadership training: you’re not only explaining—you’re motivating action.

How Visuals Became Part of a Public Speaking Course

The largest shift from ancient to modern rhetoric is the visual layer. Early speakers had props or documents at best. Renaissance classrooms introduced writable boards and illustrations. In baroque churches, preachers could point to a painting or sculpture. The 19th century delivered the Laterna Magica—the ancestor of slide projectors. By the mid‑20th century, slide and overhead projectors became standard in classrooms and conferences, but they served documentation more than persuasion. The breakthrough came in the 1980s with presentation software like PowerPoint. From then on, anyone could render ideas visually—charts, graphs, images, and motion—to clarify structure and amplify meaning. This shifted the center of gravity of public speaking course design: visuals became a core skill, not a garnish.

Don’t Just Say It—Show It

Modern Elocutio requires rigorous visual development and the technical proficiency behind it. That means corporate identity, brand colors, design systems, and presentation templates. It’s now part of a public speaking course because enterprise audiences expect visual clarity and brand consistency. In Pitch Experts’ PowerPoint essentials training module, 21st‑century rhetoricians learn what consistency means in a deck and how to:

• Select and place photos and videos with purpose

• Edit charts for clarity and truthfulness

• Use keyboard shortcuts to move faster without breaking layout

• Apply templates correctly to streamline production

• Manage animation with intent, not gimmicks

We teach practical workflows: master layout grids, typographic hierarchy, and spacing; compress timelines with reusable components; and standardize data visuals so teams surface insight instead of formatting slides for hours. The outcome is a deck that looks on‑brand, reads fast, and supports the argument under real‑world time pressure.

Are your company decks struggling—visually or technically? Pitch Experts’ creative team builds brand‑true, professional presentation templates fast. One investment ends the template free‑for‑all. With one uber‑template, anyone can swap content and keep the format—across finance, marketing, and analytics.

The Final Steps Haven’t Changed

To complete the parallel between classical rhetoric and Pitch Experts’ presentation training, consider the last two stages. After Elocutio comes Memoria—committing content to memory. Its modern counterpart is rehearsal: deliberate practice that’s a built‑in part of every Pitch Experts training. The final stage is Actio—delivery and stagecraft. Its present-day equivalent is the presenting module: body language, voice control, timing, and audience connection.

Why a Public Speaking Course Still Matters

In business, decisions land every day—and many hinge on a presentation. If a deck is dull, scattered, or poorly structured, you lose more than attention. You increase risk. Misaligned takeaways lead to slower decisions, weaker buy‑in, and missed opportunities. Rhetoric isn’t an academic artifact, it is the operating system of persuasive business communication. A public speaking course builds the ability to frame problems, unlock consensus, and drive action when stakes are high. The presentation is the arena where that ability is tested—live, with constraints. That’s why a modern program is not a luxury. It’s an investment that compounds across sales cycles, leadership updates, and product launches.

The timeless principles—logic, emotion, and credibility—still decide outcomes. The difference now is leverage. Visual and technological tools multiply their force by making complex ideas vivid, navigable, and repeatable. Pitch Experts’ trainings bring that heritage to life: we frame a structure that carries your message, build a visual layer that clarifies, prepare you to deliver with confidence, and transfer techniques Aristotle would applaud. Your presentations leave a mark. They persuade, inspire, and lead, whether you’re speaking to corporate marketing, sales leadership, product managers, or design leads.

Interested in public speaking and presentation skills? Explore Pitch Experts’ presentation training and contact us for a no‑obligation consultation.

Pitch Experts: Over a Decade in Presentations

Pitch Experts is an interdisciplinary team of designers, former consultants, and marketing professionals focused on helping organizations and individuals present more efficiently, effectively, and successfully. We blend storytelling with clear logic, user‑centered structure, and modern web‑design principles to create presentations that persuade. Our approach scales from executive keynotes to sales demos and internal strategy reviews, ensuring content and design move in lockstep.

Founded in 2018 by Benjamin Ehrhardt—a former presentation specialist, auditor, and account manager for global investment banks, strategy firms, and fintechs—Pitch Experts has since helped a wide range of international clients elevate their presentations and professional communication. We’ve supported product teams in framing complex roadmaps, marketing leaders in landing go‑to‑market narratives, and sales organizations in streamlining proposal cycles.

What Is Special About Us?

What sets us apart is our depth of understanding. We invest in learning our clients’ businesses, markets, and the people behind them. We listen actively, think rigorously, and ask the right questions—so we can identify what truly matters, improve it, and communicate it with clarity. That discipline shows up in the work: clearer structure, sharper arguments, cleaner slides, and delivery that lands. It’s a public speaking course mindset applied to the full lifecycle of enterprise communication—from framing and storylining to design and stage presence.

Learn more about us. If you want presentation training—or need a new or unified presentation template—get in touch.