The first thing that came to mind watching my video to write about how my voice showed through in my speech, was my voice. The last time I heard myself talk on video was in 7th or 8th grade. I had a really high, grinding, kind of whiny voice,. Now it seem I have the opposite. It’s low, somewhat slurred, and pretty unenthusiastic. That’s appropriate, thought, since I used to be a lot more outspoken and I didn’t care what other people thought of what I thought. Now, after middle school and high school, I’m much more self-conscious. Along the same lines, I’m less confident in what I have to say. After years of watching people tear each other’s comments apart on TV and in person, I’m somewhat uneasy about saying the wrong thing and being called. Worse than that, I fear having to defend my words and not being able to do so on the spot adequately. The low pitch of my voice and the slurring are probably both symptoms of the self-consciousness and lack of confidence. The fact that I almost never get up and talk in front of people amplified those two problems, I’m sure. I tend to mumble, too, which I know I do, since everyone’s always saying, “What?” to me, but its’ something I just do and I don’t really care about stopping it. Usually I’m just talking to myself when it happens. When I mumble during a speech, it’s likely something I think is a weak part of the speech, or is an unimportant part of it. Being more enthusiastic or lively will probably minimize mumbling.
When I got up there I was kind surprised at the amount of eye contact I did. Usually I just bury my head in the material, but since this was kind of impromptu, and I didn’t ever read what I wrote, even though it wasn’t much, I gave more eye contact than usual. Whenever I make eye contact, I tent to think about the person and not what I’m saying. It’s hard for me not to go off on a mental tangent when I look at one person, let alone 15 of them. I didn’t seem too fidgety or nervous (even though I was) and I didn’t’ rush the speech like usual. That’s probably because I had to remember some of the event on the spot and so pausing was necessary. The actual story was more cohesive in my head. Up front I did a rambling thing with a conclusion thrown in when I couldn’t think anything else to say. Usually I think about what I say before speaking, but up front I was suddenly couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I made a hasty clichéd conclusion of, “that’s my greatest moment”, which is kind of poor for a college student.
In conclusion, my reserved, quiet, self-conscious nature showed through and I think writing an underrated form of communication.
Teacher – I agree! (But so is speaking!). Matt this is good, but where is your discussion of the reading for this day?
Fauss and Fauss Chapters 3 and 4
The environment you’re speaking is critical to the success of your speech. If you’re talking about the mechanics of skydiving in a retirement home, or if you’re trying to sell someone central heating in Hawaii, then you’d better have a backup topic or a really good speech. Achieving your interactional goal can be pretty tough if the audience has no idea what you’re talking about, or if it offends/disinterests them. The point is make sure you research your setting, audience, subject, and yourself, and make sure none of the aspects of these four areas conflict with each other. If a few conflicts arise, it’ll probably be ok (such as, when communicating with a group of investors, representing your company professionally while maintaining some of your own personality). If a couple small factors clash with your audience (you’re a white, rich CEO speaking about golf to a poor, Indian family who enjoys cricket), or one big factor of the four (you’re talking about the new Lord of the Rings movie and the audience just wants to know how tall the Eiffel Tower is), then it’s going to be a really tough or really short speech.
As for focusing, the idea of a commitment statement seems good. It’s not like a hypothesis that you must stick to throughout the speech, and it helps you invite audience input because it’s not a set-in-stone statement. It’s not totally flimsy or worthless either, since it can set the tone for a good speech early on if you make a statement the audience agrees with.
Teacher – This discussion needs to be more specific and make the applications of it more detailed. This a good start – but work on that for next time
How I’d address the 4 environmental factors in the “My World” speech and my fear of speaking.
For my “My World, Welcome to it” speech I played a song by the Crash Test Dummies using autobiographical lyrics instead of the original to describe a couple times in my life. It was the final speech of the class so it would be nice to end on a good “note”, as you said. The song was a good way to achieve that since it was unique and it hopefully the rest of the speeches more memorable to the class. It was good for the class size since I put out enough sound so people could hear, but so much as to deafen them, which could be the case if I used my electric guitar and did a Metallica song {Good point – Teacher}. Time-wise, I cut it close to the minimum three and a half minutes. That means I played it a little faster than the actual song, which is probably because I was nervous.
The audience had all heard the original song when they were in middle school I would think, since it was pretty popular back then. They also probably enjoy music and where glad to hear some played even if they thought the singing was sub par. There were no negative connotations from either my lyrics or the CTD’s that I could see that would offend the audience. Their interest in and perspective on the subject (my life) have perhaps changed as a result of this speech. My calm demeanor in class has been shown to conceal a somewhat lively and artistic side that they might be more interested in now {Good observation}.
My self-attitude was kind of shaky, but also curious. I’ve never played in front of non-relatives before so I was nervous, plus I’d never sung in public before which was a dubious act for me. I was curious to see how I would sound on tape, so I didn’t think about messing up, but rather on singing the right words and the right notes. This made me more competent. Also the fact that I wasn’t doing to stand up and talk thing made me more competent since I know I’m better at musical performance than at talking.
The knowledge, comfort with, and perspective on the subject were all easy to deal with in writing out the lyrics. Mostly I was concerned with writing about events that had some impact and/or were entertaining. I got some laughs, which makes me happy that the entertainment succeeded. Digging through my memory also brought up some events I had nearly forgotten, which was a bonus side effect.
My fear of speaking is that people won’t like me as a person due to my delivery of a speech. I’m confident with my intellectual capacity and ability to formulate intelligent ideas and analyze thing, but whenever I talk it usually comes out sounding more simple than it was in my brain. Evidence of this is that I use email far more than the telephone. When I say something a people respond negatively, I wonder how they would respond if they could read my mind instead of just listening to me tell them what’s on it. Everything makes sense when I think about it, but vocalizing my thoughts is a problem, and I’m scared that what sounds good to me will should bad to the audience, and they won’t respect my ideas because of that.
Teacher – You are not alone in these fears! We’ll work on some aspects of this. Good job! Where is your journal intro for Wed’s reading?
F&F Ch 6, Sprauge and Stuart Ch 3 & 5
Elaboration is crucial in giving the audience an understanding of your topic. If you tell them that skiing is a “sport you do on snow with two long, narrow planks strapped to your feet”, they will have no idea what you’re talking about. Try to give them examples of different styles of skiing (monoskiing, bump-skiing, racing, nordic biathlon, ski-jumping, heli-skiing, extreme skiing, etc…), or examples of similar topics (water-skiing, snowboarding, sail-skiing), to open up their eyes to related topics. This may help some of the audience relate your topic to something they’re already familiar with.
One great form of elaboration is audience participation. First of all, if an audience member says something about the topic, their retention rate is much higher than just listening. Second of all, in addition to enhancing their experience, you own may be enhanced as well. Their participation will likely change your presentation method, your actual speech, or even your own viewpoint on the topic. Say you’ve been out on a tour talking about your university’s newest research finding. If an audience member stands up and tells you some other school’s research has made yours obsolete, than you’d better be thanking him for participating so you don’t make a fool of yourself at any other locations on your tour.
Another good example of elaboration is… the…example! Whoa, deep. Examples can incorporate any number of other forms of elaboration (humor, exaggeration, facts, figures of speech, emotion, dreams and visions, narrative, sensory imagery, song statistics, testimony, etc…), which makes it one of the most versatile forms of elaboration available. If your speech is on the long side, it may be feasible to work in two or more examples. This will give real-world credibility to your speech and provide a bit of storytelling for a change of pace for the audience.
Repetition and restatement (itself and example of what it is) is the third of my favorite elaboration techniques. IF all else fail, drumming your ideas into the heads of the audience may be your only option. It’s not pretty or the most audience-conscious method of elaboration, but constant of your points could be the only thing that effects your audience. Doing this subtlely is probably a good idea in any speech, but only use blatant repetition and restatement if your audience just doesn’t get it.
There are lots more examples for elaboration, but audience participation, example, and repetition and restatement are my three favorite for their effectiveness and variety.
Picking a topic so far has not been difficult. A topic that interests you and has relevance to current event is not something that takes a lot of searching for. Narrowing it down to something you can focus on intensely, but not focusing so much that it becomes boring for you by the end of the quarter seems to be the only problem we’re going to have.
Research won’t be a big problem with regards to the amount of information available. We have so many sources and conduits to information on campus, it’s not even funny. For a relatively shallow overview speech about your topic, like this speech is, you shouldn’t have to dig to hard. What you do with the info is a different matter. With so much info, it’s going to be a good idea to have a research strategy, or to modify your topic so you don’t drown in a river of info. Also, once you got your sources figured out, organizing your research will help you out. If you’re drafting the speech and you’re looking through 10 loose pages of notes for a quote you can’t remember, its going to be a wasted of time. Putting down your info in a specific order as you collect it will make writing and organizing your ideas on paper much easier.
Teacher – Matt – other of these entries are good in terms of proving you’ve done and you understand the reading. But try to work in more application of the readings to you, your topic, your presentations (your life) etc
S&S Ch 10-12, 24
Judging by the lengths of these chapters, the introduction and conclusion to a speech are of great importance to the success of the speech. Even though they only take up 25% of the speech’s volume, they are critical for a making a good opening and closing impact on the audience.
The intro is strange in that it can start before you even get up to the podium or stage. Since it begins whenever the audience’s attention shifts to you, you have to be conscious of the audience even before you want to start talking. The start of the speech is your first impression on the audience, so it’s a good idea to pull out your speaking persona (if you have one) and put it on while you’re walking to the stage, so you won’t have any moments of uncertainty or rushed mental preparation while the audience is expecting you to speak. I tend to do pretty good at organizing my main points and subtopics into a speech that’s easily followed, but sometimes it’s so clear-cut that the audience can predict what I’m going to say next, and they get bored. It’s important to get your audience’s attention and keep it, which is why the opening sentence is a big deal. If you make a bad joke or say something dull like, “In this speech I’ll be talking about the effect of single-celled amoebas on the stock market”, you may have ruined your speech by losing credibility or the interest of your audience. That means you’ll have to work twice as hard during your speech to keep them from drifting away from you, which means the intro is very important.
Conclusions are very similar to introductions, except that (hopefully) you have the audience in hand, and you’re trying to leave a lasting impression of the high points of you speech, instead of trying to get them into your hands, as you do in the introduction. You’re trying to leave a lasting impression so that they’ll remember the bulk of your body when they remember your stunning conclusion. That’s why you should end with a sentence that’s very unique or which makes a personal connections with the audience.
With regards to practice, it’s pretty self-explanatory. All you have to do is give yourself ample practice time, get a couple of people to critique you, and you’ll be set. Just make sure you practice enough to be comfortable and confident with delivering your speech.
S&S Ch 7-9, F&F Ch 5
I think I said that you should structure your information gathering in a previous journal, but apparently I was wrong. I guess you have to collect anything and everything you can before you begin any sort of organization {You can do whatever works for you}. Once the info organization starts, my method is to group similar bits of information, and then give each group a main heading in my outline. This is similar to the book’s method, except they suggest using a web to visualize how your points interconnect, which is something I haven’t done since fifth grade. Their methods for forming your outline make it a very powerful tool in your speech. They tell you how to organize your points, find related topics, and arrange the outline according to a given pattern. They even tell you to make a full sentence outline to display elaboration and a shorter topic outline to display the speech’s’ structure, for comparison and contrast. They basically make the outline the groundwork for the speech, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks in order to write your speech. So far, I’ve only used my outline to organize data from research, but the book’s way seems more logical and effective.
Constructing connections is a big deal for me because I like to have an overall view of someone’s speech while I’m listening. A string of ideas and facts may be ok if you’re telling a story to your friends, but when I hear a speech I want the speaker to have an organized, interconnected speech. It helps me believe that they know their topic inside out, and I’ll fell comfortable knowing that it’s the best possible speech I’ll hear on the topic. Connecting sub points back to the main topic makes it easier to mentally explore and absorb details and ideas from the speech while knowing that there’s home base to return to if one of the ideas goes too far off on a tangent. So, for me, any kind of connection or theme throughout the speech is vital as a listener and a speaker.
S&S Ch 13-14
With the Taliban as my topic, I’m going to need to define a couple terms and concepts for the class. They may know what a minaret is or they may not. I’m sure three will be political terms they aren’t clear on as well. The use of examples will be a big part of supporting my claims, because if I just say, “The Taliban is a very restricting or repressive government”, the class either won’t believe it or they’ll be curious as to how they repress {Good} or restrict their people. Probably a mix of short and long examples will be better than a succession of quick facts and events or a long, drawn-out history of the Taliban’s rise to power {Yes}. While searching for information on this topic on the net, I’ll have to be careful not to gather false information. I’m sure there are a lot of site up now providing anti-Taliban propaganda, which have untrue statistics or descriptions on them.
The largest part of the reasoning for “This Matters” will be causal I think. Inductive and deductive will have been done by the reporters and authors of the articles I have to read. There’s nothing to deduce or induce from events that happened and have been analyzed. The only thing you know about them is that they happened and caused something to happen later. Inductive, deductive, and analogical reasoning can be sued to predict the future of the Taliban, but right now that’s in the hands of the US. Predictions may be good for the final paper, but for this informative speech, I think I’ll leave it out.
S&S Ch 15-17, This Matters structure and delivery critique
The difference between oral and written styles of speech seems to be similar to the difference between persuasive and informative speeches. Persuasive speeches take a more conversational tone as you try to develop rapport with the audience, while informative tends to be more thought-out, dry, and carved in stone. There isn’t a very big need for audience interaction in an informative speech, but it’s very helpful in a persuasive speech. I tend to use a written style for informative speeches and an oral style for persuasion. The clarity of your language is crucial to ensuring the audience doesn’t think you’re trying to dupe the. If they think that’s the case, you can throw your credibility out the window. I think I’ll have to explain a few of the terms and proper nouns in my speeches about the Taliban. At this point in my speaking career, I’m not sure how effective it will be to attempt varying the rhythm of my sentences. If it sounds like I’m reciting a list during the speech, I’ll switch some words around, but I’m afraid toying with sentence length and structure will leave the message muddled. I know one thing I’ll have to think about doing during the next speeches is keeping my energy up. I’m not a person who emotes energy during class, so I’m wondering what the book says I should do. On the one hand, they want me to keep the energy level up, and on the other, they say not to project an image that’s completely different than the one you have in class. I think I’ll just try to be more outgoing and use more hand movements.
My clarity is very bad. I have to practice the speech more so I can focus on the delivery while I’m speaking. I need to emphasize important points more to distinguish them from elaborations and supporting ideas. I played with the frayed edges of the podium, but it wasn’t that visible. My eye contact was decent, but not great and any time I looked at the audience too long, I lost my place in the speech – which points to more practice. The speck took 5½ minutes, which is too long. I had to pause and collect my thoughts a couple times, which may have contributed, but next time I’ll aim for a practice time very near the allotted times. The delivery was kind of slow and non-energetic. The structure was kind of weak too. My body was an ok length and it was divided into two parts, but the intro was four or five times longer than the conclusion, which is no good.
S&S Ch 25-26
Like I’ve said before, mumbling is my big problem. It sounds good to me when I talk, but it must be like when you’re running a race and feeling fast, but the some guy goes flying by you. You thought you were fast, but you weren’t. I rarely pause if I can help it because it feels like wasted time during dead air. I get enough silence while I’m doing homework. But I guess I should pause more when I want a point to sink in. I could also stand to work on inflection. If I practice the speech enough, I’ll be able to remember points that need special vocal emphasis easily. I’m not sure how my volume is since I don’t hear myself the way the audience does. Judging by the videotape, though, I’m pretty quiet. When the applause starts it always seems really loud. My rate of speech seems slow, but it should pick up w/practice of the speech and better enunciations. I’ve lived in upstate NY and CO my whole life, so I doubt I have an accent to sorry about, and after taking many English classes, I know how to pronounce nay words I would put in a speech correctly {I agree w/your assessment – try to work on these for you DP (Dual Perspective) speeches!}.
Appearance-wise I could choose not to wear a hat on speech day so my hair will look better and wear nice clothes, but I don’t think this environment calls for anything beyond what you’d normally wear to class. My movement is minimal. I don’t really want to walk around the room the whole time, but more hand gesturing would be a nice touch. The big thing here for me is eye contact. When I’m nervous or thinking hard, I don’t make much eye contact. When I look at someone, I start to think about what they’re thinking about me, and I lose focus on the speech. Eye contact also suffers when you don’t practice your speech enough and you have to read your notes a lot, which is what happened for This Matters. I’m glad the eye contact problem was understood for My World. I even considered ending it with, “Please go easy on the eye contact.”
S&S Ch 23 & 27
The last speech I did, I used a manuscript. I wrote my whole speech and looked of it, when I should have used notes. The introductory story could have been manuscript, along with the closing quote, but the body should have been extemporaneous, especially since it was mostly facts. The only time I’d have to use impromptu speaking for this class would be if I forgot my notes in my dorm room, or if I asked the class for input/questions. I also goofed by making the manuscript a full-blown paper instead of a full sentence outline, which would’ve been easier to follow, and would’ve helped me remember my organization better so I could have better rhythm in the speech. There aren’t likely to be any surprises in regards to the audience. They’re all intelligent people who probably want to hear what I have to say, and they hopefully won’t heckle me. Distractions are kind of out of my hands, since the construction will go on whether we have class or not. I guess I’ll have to talk louder or just wait till the hammering stops to start speaking.
S&S Ch 18-20
In doing speeches about the Taliban, I think I should try to avoid using too much emotional impact. People are already interested in them, I’m sure, so using emotion to gain their attention should be somewhat limited. It might be good to get them to gain interest in a certain point or thesis I have, but not for the topic at large. Using Maslow’s Hierarchy, I can relate a speech to Security Needs easily, while possibly tying in Belongingness Needs like international understanding and peace, or even national pride in the community of US citizens {Good}.
I think my big problem is informative strategies. My circuits and mechanics teachers apparently never took ORCO, and their traits are kind of rubbing off on me, since I have to be able to process lots of information in order to pass their classes. Both my speeches have been pretty long, and I think it’s because I pack too much info into them. Like Kelsey said, I need to work on elaboration of ideas more and statement of ideas less. Making the topics simpler and not going into factual details so the situation I’m talking about would accomplish making the speech shorter, and also more understandable to the audience. I could also work on repetition of the main points a little to make the more obvious.
The Dual Perspectives, for me, are a proposition of fact (the US/USSR caused the current situation in Afghanistan). This will be a favorable audience, which means I should make use of emotional appeals, so forget what I said above. I should also prepare the audience members to carry my message to others, but I’m not sure I want to do that because I might get in trouble for anti-US propaganda or I could offend some people with Russian relations, like Adi said. When trying to persuade them that it was the US’s fault, mentioning the reasons why it may been the USSR’s fault and addressing them would be kind of dumb, because the class already heard why I thought it was the USSR’s fault, so I think I’ll avoid dealing with opposing arguments in the same speech.
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