ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a balanced view of lecturing, taking both its difficulties and its positive potential into account. To be sure, the ranks of the professoriate are filled with those who have excelled in this medium of instruction by dint of personal brilliance and sheer instinctive aptitude. The lecture is not intrinsically deficient as a medium of instruction. Large lecture classes are not intrinsically difficult to teach. Lecturing simply entails its own special set of challenges, which if handled in ways appropriate to the medium, can yield effective results that are rewarding to the student and satisfying to the instructor. To be sure, lecturing with no textbook at all or in conjunction with reading assignments that are complementary to the lectures is a familiar and proven method of instruction. Lecturing is no more difficult than any other mode of instruction. One need only adapt ones preparation and execution to the distinctive nature of the medium.
