Onward and Upward, or Some Such Thing

I believe that the thing that I will be taking away from this class that will be most helpful to me in the future is the idea of having a strong speech concept and outline, but not necessarily to have a speech completely written out.  In the past I have had many public speaking opportunities and have always written out my speeches in full and then attempted to memorize them and deliver them word for word.  I think that making the speech extemporaneously while keeping in mind the concept of giving a good version of the speech allows you the opportunity to be more comfortable and less uptight while giving the speech.  As long as you have done a thorough job researching your topic and are well prepared you are in a position to succeed.  In some ways this goes against my tendency toward being a perfectionist and obsessing over small details.  Still, I think that this is the best way to give a speech and hopefully as a practice utilizing this method more and more in future presentation opportunities I will become more comfortable with it.  Furthermore I may even become more comfortable with a less structured approach in other aspects of my life.  One can only hope.

A Helpful Concept

The concept from this class that helped me the most in writing my speeches this semester was the idea of knowing who your audience is going to be and keeping that in mind when writing the speech.  I think that in the past when I wrote speeches for any sort of occasion I tended to think of things mostly in terms of how I would respond to them.  I can think of one specific example where I gave a speech at my best friend's wedding where I was his best man.  When I wrote the speech I wrote it specifically with him in mind and tried to make it a funny speech that he would enjoy.  His wedding was attended by many of his family members and friends of his parents who were not in the same age group.  The unfortunate consequence was that my speech was enjoyed by my best friend and my other friends at the wedding, but overall got a lukewarm response.  I didn't think about the wide age range and differing levels of acquaintance with Jeremy, the groom, when writing the speech.

As the semester went along I feel like I got better at aiming my speeches at a broader audience.  I tried very hard to keep in mind that the majority of the class seemed to be in their early twenties, but at the same time not to forget that the age range was much wider than that.  This concept was not something that I was completely ignorant to before this class, but this class definitely opened my eyes as to how important a role the audience plays in a speech.  I will certainly not forget this lesson and look forward to my next opportunity to put it in to practice in a real-life public speaking opportunity.

My Favorite Speech

My favorite speech this semester for the class as a whole was definitely the tribute speeches.  I really enjoyed that speech because I felt that everybody in the class really cared about what/who they were talking about.  It helped me to learn about my classmates and to feel as though I know them better.

My favorite speech to give was the last speech, the persuasive speech.  I enjoyed that speech the most because it was my only speech that I thought was actually important.  The other speeches I did in the interest of getting a good grade and hopefully being somewhat entertaining and not too boring for the class.  My persuasive speech was about personal finance and investing for retirement, which is something that I am very passionate about.  As somebody who grew up in a family of six with only one parent working, money was always incredibly tight and my family lived paycheck to paycheck.  I was very aware of our situation and never asked my parents for money for anything.  Most days I didn't even eat a lunch because I didn't want to spend my family's money.  I never wanted that for my kids.  Because of this I have always been very frugal with my money and have always kept a healthy saving account.  Fortunately my wife has congruent views on this subject.

I think that a lot of people are either ignorant about saving/investing or just don't really think about it.  Especially in today's society where we see so many young people with huge debt and many families short-selling their homes or being foreclose upon.  I cared less about my grade with this speech than I did about hopefully inspiring some of my classmates to take the initiative and learn more about personal finance.

"These are my favorite chords, I know you like them too.  When I get a new guitar, you can have this one... and sing me a story I haven't heard yet." -The Weakerthans

Appeals to Logic

In this week's reading the section in Chapter 15 about logos, or appeals to logic, interested me.  I think that there is value to each type of appeal that the book describes and that some are more effective than others in a given situation.  If I were giving a eulogy I certainly would use an appeal to emotion before I would ever consider using an appeal to logic.  That being said, generally speaking I favor the appeal to logic more than any other approach to making an argument.  I think that a well structured argument centered around a very sound appeal to logic can be the most effective way to reach an audience.

I think that in almost any type of speech there is at least a small amount of appealing to logic.  The use of facts and statistics is an example of appealing to logic.  Citing sources and demonstrating your credibility are two other ways of appealing to logic.  The more evidence that you have to support yourself in an appeal to logic, the more likely you are to be successful in your presentation.  Audience's respond well to appeals to logic because by using logic in your claims you show trust in them and their intelligence; trust which they are likely to reciprocate to the speaker.

Homeschool

I fealt that the speaker who was advocating for homeschool used a variety of appeals in her speech.  She started off by using a strong appeal to emotion when she talked about violence in school and even told the anecdote about a child being the victim of violence at school.  I thought that overal she had a good speech, but to be honest she almost completely lost me in the beginning when she was talking about school violence.  I thought that it was a false dilemma falacy to present homeschool as the only way to protect children from violence and I also thought that she greatly exaggerated the level of violence in the school system.  She was good overall at citing sources and gaining credibility, but she leaned too heavily on the fact that the audience agreed with her that public schools are violent and dangerous and gave what I fealt was an insufficient amount of evidence to support the level of her claims.  I thought that later she did a much better job using an appeal to reason when she gave the statistics about how much time the average student is actually learning in school versus how much time they spend attentively learning in homeschool.

The speaker who was against homeschooling did a good job presenting all of the options for educating children and avoided a false dilemma fallacy.  Some of his reasoning was based upon an appeal to cultural beliefs by repeatedly saying that the public school system has worked for so many in the past.  He knew that it was statistically probable that most of his audience had attended public schooling and he exploited that fact by stating that public school had brought himself and a lot of others (his audience included) to a successful adulthood.  He also appealed to logic when he quoted the line from one of his sources that, "a parent's greatest challenge is educating themselves on how and what to teach."  He also went on to say that most people do not have enough all around knowledge to teach their children everything they need to know.  I think it was also a little bit of an appeal to emotion when he asked the audience if they could imagine quitting their jobs and staying at home teaching their children full time.  He also said repeatedly that parents are not teachers.

Overall I think that I learned from the first speaker not to alienate my audience by relying to heavily on one aspect of my argument, because if they don't agree then I could lose them right off.  I thought that the second speaker did a great job of giving a good compromise to oppose his opposition when he said how important it is for parents to be supportive.  He agreed with the importance of the role a parent plays in educating their child, while maintaining a distance from the more extreme view of a parent being their child's only source of education.

Working It

At work I often find myself trying to persuade my bosses in order to get them to agree to doing something that is in my best interest.  When my Postmaster recently changed our start times from 7:00AM to 7:30AM I knew that it would have a negative impact on me personally.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a class at Sierra College that starts at 4:15PM and with our previous start times I could skip my lunch on days that I could finish my route in 8 hours and get off at 3:00PM or if I had to cut mail to make it in time I could still get off by 3:30PM with plenty of time to make it to class.  With a 7:30AM start time if I had to cut mail I would get off at 4:00PM which would not give me enough time to make it to class on time even if I went straight from work and wore my uniform to school (which would be incredibly embarassing.)

All of my bosses know that I have school, so my Postmaster was not surprised when I asked if I could still start at 7:00AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  He was reluctant to let me do so, because if he makes an exception for one employee it could lead to other employees requesting change of schedules and if he doesn't grant their requests than he could be facing grievances for disparity of treatment.  I used a little bit of 3 different persuasive appeals in my attempts to change his mind.  I used a logical appeal by reminding him that before I even registered for my classes I asked him if a 4:15PM class would be manageable and even specifically asked him if there was any chance before December that our starting times could be pushed back.  I also reminded him that at the time he said they would not be pushed back and that they would work with me and I should be fine to have a 4:15PM class.  I appealed to his emotion by reminding him how important school is to me and telling him that it would be hard for me to pass my class if I was getting marked tardy every day for the next 5 weeks of school.  My third and final appeal was an appeal to speaker credibility by reminding him of how good my attendance is, what a hard worker I am, and how in the past I have done anything I could to help him and all of my other bosses out whenever it has been asked of me.  I also made sure that all of my persuasive attempt came from a positive, request for help angle instead of seeming whiny.

In the end my Postmaster said that I could come in at 7:00AM every Tuesday and Thursday until school was out and that if I wanted I could even come in at 6:30AM most Tuesdays since we usually have more mail ready early on Tuesdays.  I was ultimately more persuasive than I had even hoped to be at the onset.

Apathetic Audiences

  I paid particular attention to the section in our chapter about speaking to an apathetic audience because I think that is one of the most common audience types to encounter. It is an especially common audience type to encounter as a student, because in classes you are often required to give presentations to the other students in your class who could probably care less about the subject matter of your speech. Forging the link between yourself as a speaker and an apathetic audience can be challenging, but the reading offered helpful advice toward achieving that end. The first thing the book said is to gain their attention and pique their interest, which is generally a good idea when beginning any speech to any type of audience. I think that the second tip of showing how your topic affects your audience specifically is probably the most useful. It can be hard in a mixed demographic audience, but if you can find a commonality or universal reason why they should find an interest in your topic then you really need to emphasize that point to them after you have gained their interest.

  It also stood out to me that the book said when giving a persuasive speech to an apathetic audience you should take a one-sided approach to the topic. You still have to be fair when presenting the information, but in this type of speech it said you need not address all perspectives on the issue. If you follow those tips as well as gaining credibility, showing that you care about the topic, and using some form of presentation media, you should be successful in creating a good speech.