Month: June 2021

Prompt: After completing Speech 6 compose an honest self-reflection journal analyzing your Secrets to My Success (Promoting Yourself). What went well during the speech?  What can be improved?  Consider delivery, content, organization, and audience reaction in your response.  

I personally feel as though this speech wasn’t particularly noteworthy. I think that I simply did an all around okay job with it. If I had to pick something to be improved, the eye contact could’ve been better as I did notice my eyes wandered sometimes as I spoke, but I believe this speech is an example of improvement from when I first started. I spoke about this in the speech itself, but I kept unnecessary hand gestures to a minimum, kept a steady camera and good camera angle, as well as maintained a decent length for the speech.

Prompt: What are the big takeaways from chapter 23-24?  In a full journal entry, help explain the significance of what you connected with and be prepared to discuss next class. (150 words/chapter words—300 words total).

Chapter 23: This chapter focused on the art of crafting a persuasive speech. It first discusses how persuasive speeches can take advantage of human psychology by utilizing strategies such as making your speech personally relevant to listeners, establishing credibility to establish an audience’s confidence in what you say, as well as using personal anecdotes as audiences tend to react positively to them. It then continues by explaining the concepts of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos and how each are useful at convincing an audience. Logos applies to the use of reason, Ethos refers to the credibility of a speaker, and Pathos represents the effective appeal to emotion. The chapter follows this up by discussing how an audience’s hierarchy of needs can be appealed to, how to encourage mental engagement from the audience to ensure a better likelihood of persuasion, and then finally finishes with a note on how an audience’s reaction can vary based on the culture they are from.

Chapter 24: While the previous chapter focused on the concept of a persuasive speech, this chapter prioritizes the construction of such a speech. It starts by explaining important components of any persuasive speech, including the claim, the evidence to support a claim, and the course of action that should be taken for such a claim. As for claims, there were various kinds demonstrated such as claims of fact that focus on whether something is or is not true, claims of value that focus on judging whether something is or is not worth a commitment, and claims of policy that are requests for actions to be taken. For evidence, the chapter discusses the various kinds of sources that could be used as effective evidence that appeals to the Pathos, Ethos, or Logos mentioned in the previous chapter before it moves on to the subject of warrants where it goes in depth on multiple examples. The chapter continues on to discuss avoiding fallacies in your speeches, addressing counterarguments, and more before finishing the chapter with an effective example of a persuasive speech.

Prompt: After emailing your final draft of Speech 4, compose an honest self-reflection journal analyzing speech 4.  What went well during the speech?  What can be improved?  Consider delivery, content, organization, and audience reaction in your response.  (150- 200 words).

In this speech I wanted to attempt to convey the significant impact that a single teacher, Mr. Smith, had on my life. I had hoped to convey an amount of reverence through the way I spoke about him, and I think I accomplished this to some extent. I feel as though the tone and the way I presented myself in this speech indicated that I held him in high regard, but I certainly could’ve improved my speech through even better posture and applying maybe a bit more emotion than I did. I also feel as though the issues of maintaining eye contact as well as overuse of hand gestures was significantly improved upon in this final version. I also made sure to appear more engaged in the speech itself due to a comment on my dry run that noted how the backdrop (with me obviously laying down in bed with blankets and pillows clearly seen behind me) looked unprofessional. I think that this time I did appear more focused on the speech itself

Prompt: What are the big takeaways from chapter 25?  In a full journal entry, help explain the significance of what you found important and what you connected with in the chapter. (150-200 words).

Chapter 25 spoke on the subject of ceremonial speeches. These speeches are reserved for special events where their goal is to either entertain, celebrate, commemorate, inspire, or set a social agenda according to the chapter. It goes in-depth into these goals and how they can best be achieved and then continues by sharing examples of a multitude of contexts that warrant special occasion speeches. Each example provided its own specific uses as well as the components that are needed for a good speech. I personally found this chapter the most interesting due to the lack of real-world experience I have in giving them. While I certainly have heard a variety of these sorts of speeches, I have never considered the parts that are required to make a good one nor the fact that some of the speech types mentioned are rather similar, such as how eulogies are similar to toasts

Prompt: After emailing me your final version of Speech 3, compose an honest self-reflection journal analyzing your Teaching a Skill speech.  What went well during the speech?  What can be improved?  Consider delivery, content, organization, and audience reaction in your response.  (150-200 words).

In regards to my final version of Speech #3, I noticed a variety of things that I can improve upon for future speeches. One of the most obvious is my gestures. I have the tendency to use a lot of hand gestures when speaking with someone, regardless if it’s public speaking or between a friend or other close person in private. With practice on future speeches, I believe that I’ll work this out and either mitigate the amount I do it to a lesser degree or stop it. Another noticeable thing I can improve on is my eye contact. While I did a better job in the final product than I did with the dry run, I believe that I still have a ways to go to maintain eye contact throughout the whole speech. I think part of the issue has to do with the fact that I’m staring at a camera rather than someone else’s eyes, and that’s something I’m not used to. Lastly, I believe I can improve my posture to be more confident. While I am definitely relaxed in the entirety of the speech, my pose doesn’t give off the confidence that I want to present.

Prompt: What are the big takeaways from chapter 13?  In a full journal entry, help explain the significance of what you found important and what you connected with in the chapter. (150-200 words).

The focus of Chapter 13 was to better explain how to make proper outlines for use with speeches. The chapter begins by suggesting the use of two kinds of outlines: A working outline and a speaking outline. The intended use of the two varying outlines would be to have one for formatting the speech and another for how it’d be spoken. It then gives an example on the outline process, suggesting a process for making these outlines in an efficient manner. It also suggests multiple differing ways one might write these outlines, utilizing either a sentence, phrase, or key-word methods to write your outline. It then shows a multitude of examples on how you can write your outlines using the methods previously listed. I personally found this helpful as the clarification on how to make a proper speaking outline will allow me to perform better in the future. I previously only ever utilized my working outline and would try to adapt it into something similar to a speaking outline when needed.