Chapter 9 and 13; Video's

The first two video's were way too basic in my opinion. They restated everything i've learned a million times through out school. Chapter 13 video's did a little more for me. It was good to see another person perform a informative speech. I liked how he previewed his points, and speaks very knowledgeably about his subject. Amazingly, he gets a lot of information out during just a 4 and half minute speech. However I didn't like how he used his hands; it felt as if he was just doing the same motion over and over. The second video in Chapter 13 I really didn't like. She did relay her main points well, but she uses almost no enthusiasm, and is quite boring. There were several times where she stared at her cards for atleast half a minute; obviously not practicing her speech. Overall the video's helped a little, but it was just too basic. They helped refresh my memory, but didn't inform me of anything new..

Chapter 9, Question 3

I found that the sections in chapter nine were extremely informative, and helpful.  Especially the part about establishing your credibility.  I liked how it told you to put in your own experiences to prove your expertise on the subject.  The book also tells you to inform the audience of the research you did.  I've always had a hard time with incorporating facts and instilling confidence in my audience.  I never realized it but using your own experiences does really make sense.  It's a very good way to relate yourself to the topic, and basically tell them you know more about your subject than them; therefor they believe you.  Chapter nine helped me a great deal in learning how to begin and end my speech!

Chapter 7 Question 3

Chapter 7 was excellent in helping describe when to use different forms of information. It helped differentiate between simile's and metaphor's, and clarified several different types of media, useful when doing a speech. The most useful part of the chapter for me was learning how to use the most helpful and appropriate media for your given speech. In the book it talks about how you need to pick specific clips of media to help "support or exemplify your idea's" (p187). You need to make sure your media clip helps illustrate a main point in your speech, and isn't going off subject. It later goes on to say that you shouldn't just trust media, and that your speech should be well rounded with several different types of complimentary materials. I found it very helpful to know the different types of media, as well as when to use it, and when not to. That chapter was very good at helping me formulate idea's to how I would organize my speeches from now on!

Demonstration Speech Evaluation

Self-Evaluation

After reviewing my speech I realized that there were certain things that I did well and others that I didn’t do so well. Parts of my speech flowed nicely while others seemed to struggle a bit. I found that there were specific things that I repeated or ignored through out my speech. Some were verbal, some were physical and I hope to tackle these issues.

At the beginning of my speech I noticed that my body was rather tense and my words seemed a little unsure. I appeared to feel rushed and somewhat overeager which caused me to speak quickly and somewhat incoherently. But after a few lines into my speech I relaxed, and became confident with the material I had practiced so many times. I corrected these mistakes soon enough, got the attention of my audience. In the future I hope to start by taking a deep breath, gathering myself before engaging my audience through more eye contact. I noticed that my introductory point wasn’t emphasized as much as it should have been. Perhaps I’ll start my speech with a more attention grabbing statement.

More towards the middle of my speech I noticed that my diction became clearer and body seemed to loosen up a little. This especially helped out during my visual demonstration, which I believe to be the strongest part of my speech. It appeared to me that I was engaging my audience with a little more comfort ability and ease. I found that I was including my audience rather than just throwing words at them, hopefully gaining their attention. I like the fact that I used pictures, however I could have been a little more profound in their presentation. The diagram also seemed to be a helpful and descriptive tool to aid me in my explanation. For the most part I believe that I spoke very clearly during my speech. I felt that I had great eye contact with the class, however, I could have looked more people in the eyes rather than focus on a few. For eye contact I would give myself an 8. During the speech I used three citations, rather than the recommended 4 because I only truly used three.

The only exception that I noticed, which seemed to be a prominent one, was my over usage of fillers. The main filler that I tended to use was “umm”, in fact I said it 54 times through out the speech. This was a problem because it seemed to degrade my transitions and confuse my audience as well as myself at times. In the future I hope to slow down my words and decrease the number of fillers that I use. Which will hopefully create a more smooth and transitional speech. I also need to be more aware of my gesticulation because some of my physical actions seemed to distract myself and detour my listener from my actual speech.

After watching my speech several times I found that there were several things that needed improvement. Mainly my usage of fillers and the strength of my intro. But counter to those weak points I believe that this was a successful speech in that the positive aspects appear to outweigh the negatives. I felt that I achieved the purpose of my speech, and gave a brief but good explanation of water polo. Perhaps I could use a little more visual demonstration and less awkward confrontations with my audience. Overal the speech felt good, I thought that my grade of an A was a good interpretation of my speech. This speech helped me realize several things that I need to do to in the future. It helped me focus on what I was doing right as well as wrong.

Chapter 5, Question 3

Chapter five talks about properly preparing your speech to adapt to diverse audience. The most key part of the chapter in my opinion was understanding your speech demographic. It explains how to go about finding and relating your subject to not just one person but the whole class. Simply put everyone's different and when writing a speech you need to consider the entire audience/group effected. The chapter gave several examples of how to go about researching, analyzing, and choosing a topic. By using research methods such as surveys and audience analysis you can get a better understanding of what your listeners can, and can't relate to. It's crucial that you consider everyone's perspectives so that their comfortable with the information your providing. By being aware of a persons beliefs or his/her likes and dislikes you can pick either a neutral subject or one that you feel can be informative without offending or boring anyone. The chapter talks about how sometimes it's easy to tailor your speech to a crowd of your classmates because you already know quite a bit about them. However, through out life speeches are going to be given to plenty of people you know nothing about. So it's very important that your always analyzing your audience before given your speech!

Chapter 5, Question # 2

Audience analysis is a very important process in creating any speech. Its crucial to deciding what your going to say and how your going to relate to your audience. Analyzing your audience includes understanding what they can relate to and what interests them. Picking a topic needs to be thought out and possibly tossed around between you and others in your class. It's important that you don't pick a topic that might offend or upset someone. For example, talking about religion might be construed as preaching or forcing one's idea's on others. When writing a speech you can also consider handing out questionnaire's and getting feed back about your topic. However you don't want to just hand these out to your friends, try and pick people from different social circles.

In my speech I'm going to be talking about an international sport, water polo. For my speech I'm going to ask my peers about their favorite sports and try and describe water polo using other sports as examples. I'm also going to talk about what different area's of the world water polo is played and how it's important in history. I've already done a survey among some people in my classes simply asking them if they even know what the sport of water polo is, and then describing it briefly seeing if it intrigues them. These are just a few things I would use to help create a diverse and informing speech for others!

Chapter 5, Question 1

DRINKING -
In the first video the speaker talks about drinking and how it's dangerous to the body and other people. He chose a very acceptable topic seeing as though he's addressing college students, a perfect demographic for his topic. The speaker had very good visual aids, including charts and population statistics. However I felt as if he used too many statistics and was just reading off the projector for a good few minutes. His eye contact was good but he wasn't very engaging vocally, using a monotone voice most of the time.

What I learned:

After watching part of his speech it's apparent that choosing a good topic for your demographic is important. Using visual aids is very important as well, however, using too many aids can be damaging. Eye contact is also extremely important while giving a speech, but without vocally engaging the listener isn't good enough.

LIGHT POLLUTION
In the second video the speaker introduces us to light pollution and it's effects on the earth. Her introduction was good, she introduced exactly what subjects she was going to address and gave examples. Unfortunately she used very little eye contact, staring mostly at her speech outline. You notice that she's nervous and wants the audience to appreciate her topic when she says "it's a real problem, not making it up." This could imply that she wasn't quite sure if the topic she picked fit her class demographic.

What I learned:

From her introduction on light pollution I found that it's very beneficial to your speech if address exactly what your going to talk about and site examples your going to address. I found that it's also very important to practice your speech before hand, and not just look down at your outline the whole time. You have to address the audience visually, and mentally. The last thing was posture and hand placement. It's very important to use your hands to compliment your speech.