Ask most adults about their first memory of public speaking, and you’ll usually hear about shaking hands, a forgotten line, or a teacher saying “speak up” one too many times. For a lot of us, public speaking was never actually taught or practised: we went years without saying a word in front of a group, only to suddenly be expected to crack college interviews, ace corporate presentations, or speak with authority in job interviews.Saunak Ghosh, Co-Founder and CEO of TalentGum, believes that timeline needs to start a lot earlier – and TalentGum is trying to change it.
Communication is increasingly being recognised as a foundational skill rather than a soft one. In classrooms, in college admissions interviews, in the earliest stages of a career, the ability to structure a thought and say it clearly, under a bit of pressure, often matters as much as the thought itself. Yet for most children, public speaking is treated as an occasional event rather than a skill to be methodically developed. That is why TalentGum’s Online Public Speaking program, designed for ages 5 to 14, treats communication as an everyday capability built through guided practice, continuous feedback, and structured learning.
What makes the course distinct isn’t just that it teaches public speaking – it is how it is taught. Rather than relying on theory or memorised speeches, the curriculum is built around storytelling, structured debates, and interactive activities, including showcase challenges that encourage children to step up and perform live in front of an audience beyond the familiar faces of their regular class. It is through these experiences that children learn to express themselves with greater confidence, until the discomfort of being watched turns into the comfort of being heard. A child who learns to construct a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end is learning how to hold an audience’s attention and convey complex ideas simply. A child who participates in a friendly classroom debate learns to organize thoughts logically, think on their feet, and defend a position with reasoning rather than rhetoric. These are not abstract communication tips: they are practical capabilities built through repetition, in a supportive, encouraging setting where making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process.
Personalised feedback is the other piece that sets our public speaking program apart. Public speaking is notoriously hard to improve through generic advice – “be more confident” rarely helps anyone. TalentGum’s live, mentor-led format means an expert instructor is watching each child speak in real time and can point to specifics: pacing that rushed through the most important line, eye contact that dropped during a tricky question, a strong opening that lost momentum by the end. Over a structured, multi-month journey, that kind of targeted, repeated feedback is what turns a nervous first attempt into a genuinely confident delivery – not overnight, but consistently, session after session.
The bigger philosophy behind the course reflects TalentGum’s broader approach to co-curricular learning: skills like public speaking are not meant to be practiced only when a competition arises; they are meant to be built the way any other skill is built: through regular practice, targeted feedback, and steady progress. For parents watching a child struggle to speak up in class or freeze during a simple introduction, that is often the real value proposition: not a polished performer, but a child who no longer hesitates to raise their hand.
As communication continues to matter more than ever, in classrooms increasingly shaped by group projects, presentations, and yes, even AI tools that reward the ability to ask a sharp follow-up question, courses like TalentGum’s Public Speaking program point to a simple idea: confidence isn’t an innate trait some children are lucky enough to have. It’s a skill. And like any skill, it can be taught.
