Public speaking anxiety is rife among university students, with well-documented consequences for academic performance and future employability.
Surveys consistently show it’s one of the most commonly reported fears – Dwyer and Davidson’s often-cited 2012 study concluded that nearly one in five feared it more than death.
Left unaddressed, persistent avoidance of speaking situations can feed into broader anxiety that follows graduates well beyond campus.
The silent seminar
Staff and students alike dread the silent seminar room – discussion grinds to a halt, questions go unasked, eyes drop to the floor, and the collective energy that should drive university learning drains away.
This isn’t simply an optional add-on. Spoken participation is one of the main ways students test ideas, collaborate, and build confidence – whether in seminars, group projects, or assessed discussions – and it remains one of the most sought-after skills among graduate employers. When it disappears, something essential is lost.
At the same time, rising levels of reported anxiety, expanding support plans, legal uncertainty, and workload pressures have made speaking pedagogy feel increasingly risky for staff.
In practice, these pressures are often interpreted cautiously – rather than actively inviting hesitant students into discussion, many educators default to waiting for them to opt in, which is understandable but has real consequences. Those who most need opportunities to practise speaking are often the least likely to initiate it themselves.
Sitting it out
The collective effect is a quiet drift towards a sit-out culture, where opting out becomes the path of least resistance – particularly for anxious students – while spoken participation is left to the confident few. Ironically, practices intended to protect students can end up reinforcing inequalities in confidence, visibility, and skill development.
This matters because avoidance only sustains these fears. Decades of research in cognitive behavioural therapy and exposure-based interventions show that avoiding anxiety-provoking situations prevents individuals from reality-testing catastrophic beliefs or developing coping strategies, and over time this can entrench and even intensify fear responses.
When avoidance becomes the default response to speaking anxiety, we’re not removing barriers – we’re at risk of institutionalising them.
Despite this, public speaking at university is still most often assessed through a one-shot, high-stakes presentation. Students are expected to perform publicly with limited coaching and little opportunity for genuine skill development or reflective learning – and for students with documented anxiety, a common alternative is to deliver the presentation to an empty room.
Neither experience is likely to build real confidence or enthusiasm for speaking, and as a pedagogical model it’s poorly aligned with what we know about how anxiety is reduced and skills are acquired.
Beyond avoidance
A substantial body of evidence supports gradual exposure techniques, in which individuals progress through a structured hierarchy of tasks that correspond to progressively higher levels of speaking anxiety.
The aim isn’t to eliminate anxiety altogether, but to move beyond avoidance and help individuals learn that anxiety is manageable and temporary – and that speaking is survivable.
At the University of Liverpool, we recently piloted a new approach to teaching public speaking with several hundred undergraduate politics students, for whom argumentation, persuasion, and public reasoning are core to the discipline.
Working with colleagues from Careers and Employability, we designed a “public speaking ladder” – a structured sequence of speaking tasks that increased gradually in difficulty and exposure.
Students began with low-risk activities using digital coaching tools and virtual audiences, then progressed to intermediary tasks such as recorded audio delivery of a selected historical speech – reducing the pressure associated with authorship while still focusing on vocal delivery.
The ladder culminated in an in-person speech on a political topic of the student’s choosing, delivered in a student parliament setting, and throughout the process students received peer feedback, staff coaching, and structured opportunities to reflect on how each stage went, how it felt, and how it challenged their assumptions about speaking.
What we found
Post-programme survey data showed substantial improvements in confidence, knowledge, and oral participation. Eighty-nine per cent of respondents said they felt either neutral or actively confident about public speaking by the end of the ladder, while those expressing confidence rose from forty per cent to seventy per cent.
Ninety-five per cent reported increased knowledge and understanding of speaking techniques. Many students expressed surprise at having completed the programme at all, while others described speaking in seminars for the first time – and the pride that followed. Students also noted wider effects beyond the classroom, contributing more in SU societies, social settings, and everyday interactions.
Not a silver bullet
The ladder isn’t a universal solution – it requires careful communication, staff confidence, and close alignment with support services. Not all students progress at the same pace, and some will continue to need tailored adjustments.
But many elements – lower-stakes audio work, gradual escalation, peer feedback, and reflective practice – can be integrated into existing modules with minimal cost or structural change.
If universities are serious about participation, inclusion, and employability, speaking pedagogy needs to be redesigned rather than quietly abandoned. Allowing students to simply sit out may feel compassionate in the short term, but we fail them if they’re not prepared for the noisy world they’re about to enter.
After all, as Jerry Seinfeld famously quipped, it can’t be right that the average person at a funeral would opt for the casket over the eulogy.
This is a great initiative, and we can also consider looking at other approaches beyond traditional exposure therapy. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers another approach. If you look at how ACT is used to support people with chronic pain, it isn’t about pushing through exposure just to make the uncomfortable feelings go away. Instead, it’s about overcoming avoidance by tying actions back to a person’s core values. In the context of the ‘silent seminar’, that means helping students speak up not because it will eventually stop being scary, but because sharing their perspective actually means something to them.
Thank you for venturing forth. Are academics models of public speaking? I have listened to hundreds of academics, perhaps a thousand. Nearly all could not teach for toffee by which I mean exposition, demonstration or argument or other form of communication. Leading seminars or discussions? No. But many could write academically, after the conventions of their specialism. It is the system of assessment which is fault, beginning with the book learning of the schools. In a way, it is laughable that a blog post is written about an institution which has been here since before the 13th century in which… Read more »
The point is that with a structured set up students can become more confident at public speaking. Whether academics are models of good public speakers is less relevant than this replicable pilot.
Whoever you are, do me a favour. No one knows if this pilot can be replicated until it is replicated. The reason why an academic has resorted to these techniques is because the pedagogy has failed, precisely because the academics are not models of public speaking.
It is also the academic’s lack of professionalism and pedagogical preparation/training. I did a p/t law degree at Uni X and over 25 modules with their related seminars only one seminar leader displayed the skill and effort to ensure all students were engaged in the academic discourse – ‘You two present case A in Week 1; you two critique their presentation’ (and so on). The students relished this approach – some even donning smart clothes so as to cosplay being young lawyers in practice! The process also meant we (over-)confident mature students did not dominate the seminar…
Yes I agree, that is another point I could have made. Academics do not know how to lead seminars. As I said in an earlier post, I have never seen academics debate. Discussion, argument, rhetoric, disputation, and debate have disappeared. Seminars as a form of group presentation, Q&A, and discussion is vital for learning how to work in teams.
This is a thoughtful model for developing speaking skills, and the structured approach makes sense pedagogically for the majority of students who will understandably need to build confidence in public speaking, through limited prior experience. I do think it’s important to distinguish between common speaking nerves and the mental health condition of social anxiety disorder. A minority of students will also present with clinically significant social anxiety disorder. This is a mental health problem associated with high levels of distress in social situations and can have significant consequences for individual sufferers. Research shows it persists in the absence of evidence… Read more »
The article starts with the quote, “that nearly one in five feared it [public speaking] more than death.” For my daughter, that was literally true — and it is the reason she is no longer with us. I therefore read this article with careful consideration. In the back of my mind was also the phrase “there is no silver bullet,” so it was reassuring to see the author use it as a heading near the end. There are other quotes I agree with: “When avoidance becomes the default response to speaking anxiety, we’re not removing barriers – we’re at risk… Read more »