Future Endeavors

I am going to take a lot of things I learned from that class that will help me in future endeavors! Like I said in my last post, I am learning to become more confident in myself when it comes to public speaking. I learned to not psych myself out right before the speech because that is mainly in our heads. We just need to calm down because public speaking won't kill us! Before I knew I had to take public speaking, I was dreading this class because I had of fear of being in front of others so public speaking wasn't my favorite past time. But I learned is that it won't & can't kill me so it just made me stronger in public speaking & in general!

Concepts

A concept or concepts that I found most helpful to prepare for my speeches was the concept from Chapter 2 & 4. Building my self-confidence was the most important thing when dealing with speeches so that I would feel more comfortable in front of a audience that I did not know. I learned to use my nervousness & to turn that energy into a positive one. By doing this I would appear stronger & more passionate when going up in front of the class. If a speaker feels more confident then the audience tends to be drawn to the speaker to hear what they are all about.

Fave Speech

My fave speech to do was my informative speech because I knew most of my information when presenting. I also felt more comfortable doing this speech as well. The topic of my informative speech was Reality Television & the secrets behind it. It was pretty interesting looking up sources for that speech, and learning about the tricks reality show productions would do to create drama on a episode and what not. It made me more aware that even reality show are not to be trusted because it is not really real. The production just manipulates scenes & how the characters act to create the show.

Self Eval. #3

It was the day of the last & final speech, and I felt as nervous as the first speech. I felt those butterflies in my stomach & I felt as if I wanted to vomit once I woke up due to my nervousness. I did not practice as much as I wanted to for the final speech, so I did not know what to expect when it was my time to speak. I was the sixth speaker & I was glad because I just wanted to get it over with ASAP! While all the speakers before me had finished their speech I was getting more anxious to go up. I was a bit excited to share the information I had & I wanted to persuade my audience that animal testing was wrong & shouldn't be supported. Once I was up I was still nervous, but I wanted my information to come out strong so I hyped myself up to have a good positive energy.

I believe that I did achieve my purpose, which was not to support animal testing. I could tell in people's faces during the speech that they were disgusted by the pictures of the tortured animals, which I knew were strong images because it affected me drastically. Most of the feedback I got were positive. People said my information & visual images were strong, my delivery was passionate, and one person even said that I opened up their eyes to animal testing, which they never realized before. When I read that I felt very proud of myself because not a lot of people know about animal testing & that is why I wanted to speak about it.

In my performance overall, I think that I deserve a B because I did everything that was asked for this speech. I gave out 4 different sources, and I probably mentioned them 6 times throughout the speech. My eye contact had gotten better since my first speech. I give myself a 8 in eye contact because I looked around the room, & not in one spot. I also tried to glance at my notecards, but I did have to read off my notecards because of the many quotes I had used. I just wished I had time to practice more because I did go over the time limit, so I had to cut out a lot of information, which I wanted to share with the class.

What was different from the final speech, and the last speech I had was that I felt more nervous on the final one. The last speech was on a make-up day so I felt more comfortable & confident on that day. I was more nervous for the final speech because I didn't practice, & I knew more people had to be there because it was the final speech. I believe that I did a better job of using sources in my final speech than my last speech. I used more quotes & statistics that were relevant to my topic. I don't think I did anything distracting in the final speech. I knew on the last speech my hair was a problem, so on the final speech I had a clip ready for my hair.

On the final speech, I was pretty surprised that I was as calm as I was standing in front of the class. There was a tremble in my voice, and my throat was dry, but I cared more about the information I wanted to give out to persuade the class. Based on all my three speeches, I would say that the second speech was the best. I think I did better on the second speech because I was more comfortable, calm, & confident since there were only about 5 people there! But I was most proud of my final speech :]

Concepts in Chapter 15 & 16

A concept I found useful in chapter 15 is that we should avoid fallacies in our argument. A fallacy is something that is wrong in our argument. There are four main categories for fallacies which are: faulty assertions, flawed evidence, defective reasoning, erroneous responses. If we have a fallacy in our speech then the audience would not see the speaker as reasonable, and someone we should not trust.

A concept I found interesting in chapter 16 was about the different speeches for special occasions. There are speeches of introduction where the speaker introduces someone very briefly to the audience. Speeches of nomination that shows a persons success if could of had the chance. Award presentations where people recognize others for what they have done. Acceptance speeches, which a person who is given a award,honor, etc. is speaking. After-dinner speeches where the speaker keeps the good feelings up. Tributes and eulogies are another form. Tributes are where we give respect towards an individual for what they have done. A eulogy is given when someone has passed away. The last type of speech for a special occasion is mediated speaking.

Persuading Others

A recent discussion in which I tried to persuade someone to accept my point of view was when I tried to tell my friend to go with me to the library because I had to pick up something and I did not want to go alone. She did not want to go with me because it was too far of a walk, so I explained all the times I went with her when I did not feel like walking at all. I told her that I always went with her when she needed something, so I expected the same thing :). So my reasoning should of made her feel bad because she ended up going to the library with me! It just takes a bit of persuasion to convince someone to do something even if they don't want to!

Speech Buddy Videos

In the 15.1 video I learned about how to identify the elements of arguments, which can be helpful towards our speech. There is four basic elements when it comes to this which are: thesis, claim, evidence, & reasoning. The types of appeal the speaker used was to relate the material to the audience, and to link the claim to the evidence.

In the "Schooling: Pro" video I learned about the pros of home schooling. I learned that it can be more flexible, it avoids violence, and that it brings strong relationships, which these types of points would be of interest towards the audience. In the video "Schooling:Con" the speaker is telling us the cons of home schooling. He explains that parents aren't as effective as real teachers, that are home isn't a great environment of learning, and parental involvement. The speaker appeals the audience with his main points by giving us a visualization of his words. Both speakers in the "Schooling" video tried to connect the audience by letting us picture everything now and in the future.