Week 15, Discussion 3

In Chapter 16, I learned how to correctly create speeches of occasions. There are speeches of nomination, award presentations, acceptance speeches, after-dinner speeches, tributes and eulogies, and mediated speaking. During speeches of nomination, one must "identify the nominee, cite the best reasons for selecting the person, personalize the candidate without being too informal, express confidence in how the nominee will perform, ask for the group's support, and thank the group" (428). During award presentations, "a spotlight should be shined on the award, the recipient, and the occasion" (429). For acceptance speeches, one should be thankful and humble, succinct, and contextualize the award. After-Dinner speeches are usually part of an organizational event. One should be entertaining and lighthearted but also focus on the theme. Tributes and eulogies should emphasize emotion appropriately and provide inspiration. When giving a mediated speech, one should "dress appropriately, try to learn as much as possible about the structure and format of the event, write a brief presentation outline with keywords and phrases that can quickly be glanced at, limit physical movement, be assertive and confident, and avoid acronyms or jargon that only those who are knowledgeable of the topic would understand" (435).

Week 15, Discussion 2

Every day at work I have to persuade customers into my opinion. I work for a company that provides home furnishings and our customers rely on our knowledge of the furniture and design. Persuading them to buy our products can be extremely complicated. In order to persuade them into, I guess you could say, buying my "opinion," I tell them the benefits of the product by backing it up with evidence. For example, I refer to the kind of material the product is made out of and talk about our competitive prices that we offer. In order to persuade customers into buying something you must state your claim and then back it up with evidence.

Week 15, Discussion 1

Video 15.1 taught me about the elements of arguments. They are thesis, claims, evidence, and reasoning. A thesis is very important because it states the central idea of your speech. In order to support your thesis, you use claims, evidence, and reasoning. It is very important to link your evidence to your claims. I am going to use this in my speech by making sure I make the claim that genocide is a serious issue that should be taken control of and then give evidence as to why I am making this claim. In Schooling: pro I noticed that Dixie had very good eye contact and spoke at a constant rate. She sounds very confident about her topic as she walks around and looks towards the audience but I think that she could have talked a little louder. While watching Schooling: Con I noticed that Robert used a lot of gestures, which, to me, was really annoying. He sounds excited about the topic and spoke at a good rate with a good pitch. I think that Dixie connected to the audience better than Robert because she gave a lot of eye contact, seemed very confident, used hand gestures but not too many to be annoying, and walked around while she gave her speech. Although I have never had a problem with the rate or pitch of my voice during a speech, I am going to focus on that for my third speech.

Week 14, Discussion 3

I think that each and every person is immersed in a sea of persuasion. Day after day we see billboards, magazines, television commercials, Internet ads, etc. that try to persuade us to buy certain objects or dress, talk, and look a certain way. During high school there were a lot of speakers who came from different companies or schools such as FIDM. The whole goal of the speaker from FIDM was to persuade students to go to that particular school and join its programs. The lady went over all of the different eras of fashion in the past hundred years and then gave all of the student’s information on the school. Persuasion like this is easy to avoid but media persuasion is not. In order to be a more critical consumer, it is best for a person to think hard about the item. On the Internet it is easy to hit add to cart, and while watching infomercials it is easy to dial a phone. In order to be a critical consumer, one must really sit back and think about how much they need the item, if it is really going to work, and why they need or want it.

Week 14, Discussion 2

One concept that I found useful and interesting from Chapter 14 was persuading different types of audiences. The five different types of audiences are negative, positive, divided, uninformed, and apathetic. The negative audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic but holds an unfavorable view of the presenter's position. This type of audience is also called a hostile audience. They may seem intimidating but if you establish credibility, take a common-ground approach, help your audience visualize the topic in positive ways, and prepare for your audience's negative reaction to your position, you can successfully persuade them to favor your position. A positive audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic and favors the presenter's views. They are also called a sympathetic audience. In order to persuade them to still favor your position, you must rely on narratives to elaborate on your points, incorporate engaging evidence that further reinforced the audience's commitment to the topic, use vivid language and images to heighten your audiences enthusiasm, and last but not least, rally them to take action. A divided audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic but is equally split between those who favor and oppose the presenter's position. In order to persuade them to favor your position, you must demonstrate that you recognize the legitimacy of the arguments that are for and against the issue, establish credibility, establish common ground, address the objection, and reinforced the position of those who agree with you. The uninformed audience is an audience that is unfamiliar about the presenter's topic and has no opinion about it. In order to persuade them to favor your position, you must motivate your audience to want to learn more about the topic, demonstrate expertise on the topic, use repetition and redundancy to reinforce points, and keep persuasion subtle. Last but not least, the apathetic audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic but is not interested in it. In order to get this type of audience to favor your views and become interested, you must gain the audiences attention and show how the topic impacts them. You must also show the audience how much you care about the topic and take a one-sided approach on the particular topic.

Week 14, Discussion 1

For my third and final speech I will be talking about genocide. The three main points that I am going to use are information about genocide and refer to the eight stages, describe the solutions to the stages, and persuade the audience to get involved. To begin my speech, I plan on telling some sort of a story. As for ending my speech, I am going to tell my audience all the ways to get involved. Although it is mostly something that the government deals with, every one can help by doing simple things. Yes, they may take some time out of the day, but in the end every person who helps out is potentially saving a persons life. In order to persuade my audience towards my point of view, I am going to tell them the advantages of getting involved. I am also going to refer to my PowerPoint pictures and hope that my audience sees the importance of being involved.

Week 13, Discussion 3

One concept that I learned from chapter 12 was managing your voice during your speech.  "Good voice volume, variations in vocal qualities, minimal pauses, and clear articulation, and pronunciation, are essential for effective public speaking" (305).  Voice volume is important because the audience members should be able to hear you without straining to do so.  Rate and higher pitch are important because it shows that you are excited about your speech. Pronunciation and articulation are important because while giving a speech you don't want to leave off the endings to words and you want to know how to say them right.   

Week 13, Discussion 2

The people on Flickr seem to be concerned with the way that language can be sexist. I don’t really see a problem with this because in the end calling someone girl when they clearly are a woman should not be seen as offensive. In my eyes, this is not sexist, it is just language. However, I guess it just depends on the person. The book talks about how genders can look at certain words and phrases differently than those of the opposite sex do. Certain words that are used can be seen as women self-doubting themselves when really they aren’t. All in all, it is just language and it can be taken many ways.

Week 13, Discussion 1

In video 10.1, I learned about audience centered language. The five ways to create an audience centered language are: refer to current events, use pronouns (we, you, us, and I), use inclusive language, help visualize ideas, and spark the audience’s imagination. In video 10.2, I learned how to make language choices. You must choose meaningful words, have a balance between clarity and ambiguity, be concise, avoid offensive language, build in repetition, and don't get too attached to words. Video 12.1 taught me the five aspects of vocal delivery. They are: volume, pitch, rate, variety, articulation and pronunciation. Volume is the most important aspect of vocal delivery. Video 12.2 taught me about the physical delivery of a speech; eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, body movements, and appearance.


In my third and final speech I am planning on focusing on audience centered language and the give aspects of physical delivery. I noticed in my last two videos that I use a lot of gestures and I don't stand still which can be very distracting! Eye contact is also something that I want to focus on. In my last two speeches, I used my note cards for guidance, but I am hoping that this time around I can focus on my audience and only use my note cards for direct quotes!

Week 12, Discussion 3 (Self Evaluation)

Speeches have always made me nervous to the point where I have felt like I was going to pass out. I get such great anxiety because I psyche myself out and think that I am going to do horrible. Going into this past speech, I thought of it as not a big task and tried to set low goals so I knew that I could meet them. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel nervous going into this speech because I felt so confident and I knew that within a matter of seconds, it would be done with.

In this past speech, I think that I achieved the purpose well. I informed my audience about the mind of a serial killer and went into great detail about each and every subject that I brought up. This speech seemed a whole lot easier for me to accomplish. I had practiced this speech more than I had practiced the first one which made me feel a lot more confident as soon as I stepped in front of the class. Secondly, the lack of people who were in the class made it easier for me. I tend to give better speeches when there are less people watching my every move.

Although I felt more confident with this speech, I would make some changes if I had to do it again. I know that I would have memorized my speech, so I wouldn’t have to use my note cards. Although I rarely used them, I would still like to accomplish one of my speeches without having to use something to help me along the way. Even though I did use my note cards for help, I feel like I gave much more eye contact to my audience which is a big accomplishment for me.

I don’t really have a specific goal for improving the content of my next speech. I feel like I have been writing my speeches well and including all the information that I have needed for each speech. One goal that I have for improving the delivery of my next speech would be to have it completely memorized or have everything but my direct quotes memorized. I think that the third speech will be the easiest one for me because I have done a lot of research on it before and I know a lot about my topic. Memorizing my speech should not be that hard so I will be trying to focus on giving the audience my fullest attention. Specifically, my confidence was different from my first to second speech. In the first speech I was so nervous and just wanted to get it over with and before my second speech I didn’t seem to care when I was presenting as long as I did a good job. I don’t feel like I did anything bad during my second speech but something that I could have improved on from my first to last speech was my eye contact. I did improve, but I know that I could have done a lot better. I also noticed that I move around a lot while giving my speech so I definitely want to focus on that for my third speech because I know how distracting it can be. This was not an improvement from my last speech because during my last speech I didn’t stand still as well.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate my eye contact a 7. On a scale from A to F, I would give my speech an A. I felt really confident when I was finished presenting and I know that I had included all of the information that was asked of me. I also spoke loud and clear, and my eye contact also improved. I also noticed that during this speech I did not look at my slides and point to the images on the screen, I focused on my audience. During my speech, I used ten source citations. I had a lot of direct quotes and they came from the four sources that I had used to write my outline.

All in all, this speech was overall better than my last speech. I am happy with the way that this it turned out and now I know what I need to improve on for my third and final speech. I hope that my next speech turns out ten times better and I reach my goals that I have set for it!

Week 12, Discussion 2

One concept that I learned from chapter 11 was the different kinds of presentation media and design tips for digital slides. There are different types of presentation media, such as overhead transparencies, flip charts, white boards and chalkboards, document cameras, video, handouts, models, and sound recordings. There is also computer technology such as digital slides. Chapter 11 taught me digital slide design tips. The tips include limiting the number of words for each bullet point, making the font large and clean, avoid relying on text or numbers, choose transitions that fit the tone of your topic and visual material, and avoid special effects. The design tip that I found most helpful was to avoid special effects. I usually use these in my presentations because I have always thought they added "a little something" and it made it look like I actually spent time putting together my PowerPoint. However, now that I know that audiences see these effects as annoying and distracting, I will refrain from using them in the future.

Week 12, Discussion 1

The five people that I chose to re-present my speech in front of were two of my friends Amber and Danielle as well as my mom, dad, and brother. Before giving this speech, I really took the time to read my note cards well and I tried my best to memorize what I had written. While giving the speech I looked at my note cards a few times but not as much as I did while I presented in front of the class. My feedback from Friday was very positive however I had noticed that it mentioned a lot about not focusing on my audience. I took that information into consideration and really focused on looking at my audience while I was presenting my speech for the second time. Like I mentioned earlier, I used my note cards for some help along the way but I do feel like I improved. If I had to do my speech again, I know that I would feel much more confident because of the amount of times I would have practiced it, however, I would want to have the whole speech memorized, including the quotes. I know that it would be difficult but it is not something that is impossible. It would just take a lot of practice. After receiving feedback, I realized that I was able to improve my speech and found that this exercise was very helpful.