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.