The art of public speaking or performing presentations to different kinds of public is today an important competence. It appears in various competence models (e.g. for managers, people in sales, etc.) and is used as well as a tool for observing and evaluating other competences (e.g. self-confidence, influence, leadership). We outlined the path of change from the ancient skill of rhetoric oratory to the contemporary competence of public speaking and defined the criteria by which we recognize and evaluate the ability of effective public speaking. We have set ourselves the goal of determining whether we can develop or significantly improve this skill in accordance with the defined criteria. We were interested in how participants of the informal training perceive their public speaking competence at the beginning, and how they perceive it at the end of the training. We have explained the concept of training in this thesis and re-defined it as a method of active teaching. We had at our disposal the results of a three-part questionnaire, which have completed the participants of the two-day public speaking (rhetoric) training at Mars Venus, Ltd. We have found that the perception of competence for conducting public speaking at the end of such intensive informal training has raised both by the participants themselves and by the observation of other participants.
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