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.

Sea of Persuasion

  I think that all of us have been immersed in a sea of persuasion lately with the recent election that has taken place and all of the advertising that led up to it.  I am a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service, so I have probably been bombarded by political advertising more than most in the recent weeks.  Not only did I see advertisements when I watched television, see posts on social networking sites regarding politics, and get political advertisements in the mail, I literally handled and looked at hundreds and some days thousands of political advertisements.  Because I work in Sacramento County, but live in Placer County, the advertisements that I had direct contact with every day at work were often for politicians that I was not even able to vote for or against.  I was surprised by the time the election came how much I knew about some of the politicians that I had done absolutely no research on and had no interest in just because of what I had seen in their ads, which I rarely ever made a conscious effort to read.

  I think that Facebook has been another area in which I have been confronted with persuasive messages in regards to politics without ever wanting to be.  I ended up hiding updates from many of my friends and family because I got so sick of seeing their politically charged comments and their links to news stories that I strongly disagreed with or felt were unfairly biased.  At times I was even offended to the point of wanting to confront some of them, but generally I felt it was best to spare the long term relationship from the damage of a political argument.  I think that it is impossible to avoid being subjected to persuasive messages, especially in today's interactive internet culture and with the mass media that many of us expose ourselves to daily.  The best that we can do is to make sure that we remain informed about important issues and try not to make decisions based on a gut reaction or feeling.  Often time our initial feelings are heavily subconsciously effected by the opinions that others (especially advertisers) have pushed on to us.  If we inform ourselves and take time to form our opinions we can be sure that we are making good decisions that we truly believe in.

Monroe's Motivated Sequence

  For my persuasive speech I think that I would prefer to use Monroe's Motivated Sequence for my organizational patter rather than the Problem/Solution pattern.  I think that Monroe's Motivated Sequence fits my topic of encouraging people to save money and invest for retirement.  It would be a bit hard for me to boil it down to something as simple as their being a problem that people can't afford to retire comfortably and the solution is to save money.  Monroe's Motivated Sequence seems like it would be a much more interesting way to keep my audience engaged and get them, as a mostly young group that is not anywhere near retirement, to buy in to my premise that they should be sacrificing now for a reward later in life.

  I have never used Monroe's Motivated Sequence before, but it seems to have a very natural flow to its steps.  Without having started my outline, I can already very easily imagine the overall direction my speech would go and can even visual specific things I would like to communicate within each step.  I think that my biggest issue will be fitting all five steps in to a limited time frame, when time management has been my biggest problem all semester.  Although it does seem that the Attention is a natural fit for the Introduction and Action (the last step) is a natural fit for the Conclusion, so it would make sense for the other three steps to be broken down in to my three body paragraphs.  I am looking forward to the challenge of putting this newly gained knowledge in to action and successfully achieving an interesting and well-structured speech.

Sexism in Language

  I found the section of Chapter 10 regarding Language and Gender to be quite interesting and informative.  As someone who doesn't consider themself to be at all sexist, I would never have thought that certain specific things can be construed so differently when heard by women versus men, or when spoken by a woman as opposed to a man.  I was not all that surprised, but I would not have expected that the tag question of "don't you think?" would be interpreted so differently based upon the gender of the speaker or audience.  It said that men interpret that phrase as uncertainty while women interpret it as an invitation for others to give their opinion.  If I were to hear that phrase in a speech I think that my most likely reaction to it would be to think that the speaker was trying to engage the audience and subtly make them think a little bit more about what they had just said.  It also said that when a woman speaker uses hedges or tag questions it causes listeners to view them as less competent, whereas if a male counterpart did the same it would have little effect on how their audience perceived their competence.

  In a way I think these inequalities in how men and women are judged when speaking have less to do with language and more to do with the continuing sexism and sexual bias perpetuated in our society.  Kelly Oxford, a comedian I follow on Twitter, once made the joke that "If men could get pregnant their would be an abortion clinic in every Starbucks."  On the same topic my wife recently commented that whenever she drives by the Planned Parenthood near our house and their are picketers protesting abortion they are always old men.  I am not trying to take a stance on abortion, I just think that it is interesting that the sex who is less impacted by abortion (men) seems to be the one who has the most outspoken opinions about it.  Maybe I have gotten off topic, but I think that it relates in that many men seem to have a subconcious belief that they have a right to dominantly impress their opinions and feelings on to women.

  I also liked the part where it said if you refer to a "female doctor" it is sexist because you are implying that a doctor would be more likely to be a man so it is necesarry to say the doctor was female.  I think that a lot of people do the same thing with race, which has always bothered me.  When describing someone a lot of people will say they are black, Indian, Asian, etc. but will not usually describe someone as white.  I don't actually think they should describe someone as white, rather I would think that race could be left out of someone's description unless it is for a police sketch or something of that nature where it is actually relevant/necessary to identify them.

Pace Yourself

  I think that the speech buddy videos for this week were some of the most helpful ones to date.  There were a few things that they emphasized that I will do my best to utilize in improving my next speech.  My biggest issue so far when giving speeches has been my time management.    The advice from Chapter 10 about being concise as well as in Chapter 12 when they said not to be married to the wording in your speech should help me with that issue.  I liked when they said that you don't need to give the exact same speech every time, just a good version of that speech.  I will also be making a point in my next speech to make use of inclusive language.  I want the speech to not just be about me, what I know, and what I think; I want the audience to feel that the speech was written for them, for their benefit.  I will also try to build repetition in to my speech if possible, as that seems like a good way to emphasize more important aspects of the speech.  In the past I have done that in the conclusion, but there is no reason to only use it there.

  In the video about delivery and speech patterns the part that I felt pertained to me the most was in regards to pacing, or rate of speech.  This also goes back to my time management issue.  I tend to try and cram too much information in to a speech and rather than self-edit I sometimes end up rushing through my speech, especially in the case of the second half of my most recent speech.  It is better to give less information while making sure that my audience is absorbing it, than to give a ton of information, but have only a small portion of it be absorbed because my frantic rate of speech loses my audience.

Self-Evaluation for Informative Speech

  When I gave my Informative Speech about the Electoral College I felt that I did a pretty good job on explaining the Electoral College to the audience.  I think that I did a better job of giving historical context that helped explain the reasons behind why it was created the way that it was and a less good job of explaining the way that it works today.  I felt very confident leading up to and during the speech, but felt less comfortable than I normally do in public speaking situations.  I think that part of this was because in my previous speech I had trouble staying within the time limits because I become very rigid when giving a speech about making sure that I include all of the information that I had planned to.  In an attempt to make my speech more extemporaneous and less rehearsed, which I though would give me the opportunity to adapt as it went and cut things out as need be, I ended up feeling flustered toward the end because I was running past my time and had trouble adapting on the fly.  I also think that because my speech was less structured I ended up repeating several of the points that I made.

  I think that the content of my speech was well researched, well planned, and that I didn't leave out anything important.  If anything I think that I may have included a few unnecessary details that obfuscated my audience.  I think that the introduction was good and that the conclusion was good overall, but didn't provide very good closure or have a strong finish.  I don't think that I did anything distracting during the speech, except for maybe looking down at my notecards.  I think that my eye contact wasn't too bad, but I did look down at my notecards more than would be desired because I had rehearsed my speech less than I normally would like to.  In my last speech I only cited two of my four sources, which I improved upon in this speech by mentioning four or five of them (I think it was five, but I may have missed one, not 100% sure.)  I think that was another reason I looked at my notecards too much, because I didn't want to forget to cite a source.  I would rate my eye contact as a 7 out of 10, but hopefully I'm being too hard on myself and it was better than that.

  Overall I would say that this speech was less good than my last speech.  I did a better job of the technical aspects by citing all of my sources and being closer to the time limit for the speech, but I still went over the time limit.  I think that this speech was the least interesting speech I have given so far and my audience seemed bored and disinterested.  I have only used Power Point once in my life and it was about 15 years ago, which showed.  My use of Power Point was the worst of anyone in the class.  I think that I would give myself a B- on this speech.  I still think that I did a pretty good job.  I put a lot of work in to my speech and I think did a better job than just satisfying the requirements, but nothing special.

My Cousin's Wedding

  The last time that I remember viewing a speaking event that made use of presentation media was in a personal setting, rather than formal.  It was at my cousin's wedding reception., so I suppose that in a manner of speaking it was a "formal" event, but the presentation was more casual and was amongst friends, families, and peers.  My cousin was married at a very small church at Notre Dame that could only accomodate somewhere around 80 guests.  Because of this they decided to have a second reception in California for all of his friends and family members that he could not invite or could not make it to the wedding itself.
  At this wedding reception he showed a slide show of different stages in their relationship and a lot of pictures from the actual wedding.  I thought that it was an especially effective use of the visual media because it made everyone there feel as though we were at the wedding, without actually being there.  When I look back at his wedding reception I can picture the ceremony and the church vividly in my mind, as well as the bride in her wedding dress.  I also thought that the earlier part of the slide show was excellent because he told the story of his proposal and included pictures taken shortly before and after and pictures of the place where the proposal took place.  Because he and his wife (fiance at the time) lived in North Carolina prior to their marriage many of his family in California had not spent much time around his wife and had not seen them together during the earlier stages of their relationship.  I felt that it helped me to picture the two of them as a couple more and less as the individual of my cousin whom I had known for a long time and the individual that was his wife whom I had spent almost no time around.  I would say that it was a perfect use of presentation media and I don't think that I would have changed anything that he did.

Check Out My Slides

  In the reading this week the topic that I found most interesting was the over-arching idea of why you should consider using presentation media at all.  I always want to do a good job at everything that I do, but I also prefer to not add extra work to assignments or to make anything harder than it has to be.  I feel as though I usually do a good job in my speeches and have seen many effective speeches throughout the years (and even just this semester in our class) that have not used any sort of presentation media.  When making a speech in a very small window I think that the opportunity to add another element to the speech can make the preparation more complex.

  While it is true that the use of presentation media can ad more work to your speech, there are reasons why people do use it.  In many cases it can be an effective way to share information.  The sentence in the book that really stuck with me was the bullet point that, "You can use presentation media to illustrate an idea that can't be fully described by words alone."  I think that a power point specifically, since that is what we will be using in our next speech, can be a very effective way to illustrate an idea that I can't fully describe in a way that my audience will completely understand.  I also think that power point is an excellent way to graphically display facts and figures.  When you say numbers to people I think that they often tune out or don't fully absorb their impact.  When you see a number represented visually it can often have more impact and stick with you more.

"There's blood in my mouth 'cause I've been biting my tongue all week." -Rilo Kiley

Less is More

I think that the biggest thing that I gleaned overall from the Speech Buddy Videos was the importance of simplicity in visual media that accompanies your speech.  There is a tendency to want to convey as much information as possible to your audience, which can have a negative impact when you clutter slides with too many images or words.  I also took note in the video that showed a girl giving a presentation about Sikh culture of the point that was made when she put five images on one slide and none of them stood out or could be clearly seen.  On the video they said that it would have been better for her to use five individual slides to show each element.  My upcoming speech is too short to show numerous slides, but I did think it was important that if there are specific things that I want to give a visual aid for I should not try to cram them all on to one slide.  If anything it would be better to choose which image is the most helpful to my audience or most key to my speech and discard the other images altogether.  When giving a speech you always want to be concise and not add superfluous information that is going to confuse your audience or make them lose sight of the main elements of your speech.  The same is true for any visual media that you use to accompany your speech.  It should emphasize your main points, not add new and possibly unnecessary information.

"I'll know my song well before I start singing." -Bob Dylan

For Starters

  There are a few important components of any well written introduction and conclusion. To begin with the introduction, the important components that you want to include are an attention getter (which may include an audio or visual clip), a clear indication of your purpose and thesis, something that establishes credibility, and a preview of the main points of the speech. I plan to use a power point slide with a representative map of the electoral votes and to say something that very briefly explains the electoral college in a way that sounds complicated, followed up by a promise that I will explain it within my speech in a way that will make perfect sense to everyone. Something along the lines of,
"The electoral college grants a total of 538 votes, with 2 granted to each state and the District of Columbia representing their 2 Senators and an apportioned amount of the remaining 436 electorates based upon population data gathered during the census directly proportionate to the number of Representatives granted to that state. Got all that? I know it sounds complex, but I am going to do my best to help all of you understand...."  I will establish credibility by utilizing my first oral citation of the Federal Election Commission and will preview the main points at the end of the introduction to prepare the audience for the upcoming structure of my speech.
   In my conclusion I will make sure to review the main points that I have outlined throughout my speech that were originally previewed in my introduction. I will also make sure to clearly reinforce my purpose of educating my audience about the process of the electoral college so that they clearly understand it. I will also try to provide closure by stating something that may have been confusing to them at the beginning of my speech and then draw attention to the fact that they now understand it which shows that they have learned something during my 5 minute speech.  Subject to change, I am planning to say, "So now when you hear on election night for example that “Barack Obama captured the swing state of Florida,” I think you will fully understand what it means and why it is important."

"Man plans, God laughs." -Yiddish proverb

Speeches About Processes

  In chapter 13 I thoroughly read and re-read the section pertaining to Speeches about Processes because my Informative Speech is a speech about a process. I am speaking about the electoral college and will be attempting to explain how it began, how it functions today, and what the importance and purpose of it is. Because my speech is about a topic that is somewhat more of a macro concept, it will not be as easy to imply a sense of impotence to my audience as a topic that is more personal or simple. If I were talking about the process of voting it would be easy to stress the importance to my audience because they can go out and vote, whereas they will not ever engage in any sort of action in relation to the electoral college. I think that will be one of my biggest challenges in this speech. This means that I should have a clear understanding going in to my speech that I am speaking with the goal of helping my audience to understand the process, rather than how to enact it themselves. Another aspect of my topic that I think will lend itself toward keeping the attention of my audience is that it is a topic that I feel most of my audience does not currently fully understand. The book says to avoid topics people already feel they have a firm grasp of because if they think that they already possess full knowledge of the subject they will not be paying close attention to you because they will not feel as though they have much to gain by doing so.

Starts and Finishes

  I think that the videos to accompany chapter 9 did a good job of reinforcing the importance of the introduction and the conclusion of a speech to me.  While every part of a speech is important and should be given ample attention, the introduction and conclusion carry particular weight.  The introduction is important because if you do not get the audience's attention and interest to start things off they are unlikely to pay close attention to and absorb the information that you relay to them throughout the body of your speech.  I think that this idea within the context of our class which emphasises extemporaneous speech made me realize how important it is to have a tight, well rehearsed introduction.  It also makes sense to me why we are required to write out our introduction and conclusion, while we only outline the body of the speech.  The conclusion bears special importance because it is the final impression that you leave your audience with and it can effect the way that they remember the speech as a whole.
  In the videos for chapter 13 where they had examples of infromative speeches I found some helpful insights to be gleened by viewing the videos.  Evan made good use of his power point slide, even though there was only one of them.  He did not just put it up on the screen, but directly referenced it and pulled the attention of the audience toward his slide at multiple points during the speech.  Janine's finale to her speech was good because it was concise, interesting because of good use of a prop, and provided obvious closure.  The third of the speeches was alright, but I felt was for the most part lackluster and reminded me of the importance of knowing your speech topic well and maintaining a good level of energy throughout your speech.

"Put that coffee down!  Coffee's for closers only." -Glengarry Glen Ross

Demonstation Self-Evaluation

  I felt that overall I did a good job during my speech and achieved its intended purpose.  I clearly demonstrated how to make coffee with the use of a French press.  Beyond the simple function of making the coffee I taught my audience a little bit about the origins of coffee without getting too bogged down in details and getting away from my main purpose.  I also gave credible sources as to why drinking coffee can be beneficial to your health, which provided a reason why the audience should consider putting in to practice the skill I demonstrated for them of making coffee.  I felt very confident and completely at ease while giving my speech.  I have never had much of a problem with confidence in regards to public speaking and it was especially easy because I already knew my audience and have successfully spoken in front of them already in the past.
  If I had to do the speech over again I would have paid more attention to the details.  I only verbally cited two of my sources, whereas we were required to cite all four of them.  One source wasn't even written on to my note cards and one was on my note cards but I simply forgot to mention it.  I also would have done a better job of deciding beforehand more fluff that should have been cut out of my speech.  When I practiced my speech it originally was almost six minutes and thirty seconds, but with practice and a little bit of editing I had it consistently down around five minutes and thirty seconds.  I cut a few more superfluous parts out at the last minute, but still ended up going over the five minute time limit.  I think that for my next speech I will make a point of improving my preparation by ensuring that my speech is closer to the middle of the range of allowable times so that I am less likely to go over and don't feel like I am rushing myself during the speech.
  My biggest focus for improving the delivery of my speech will be in making sure that I do not forget to cite any of my sources.  I also feel that my eye contact was probably a 7 out of 10.  I need to try and have my introduction and conclusion more well memorized because I think that those are the times during my speech when I look down at my note cards the most.  I do not remember doing anything that I felt was distracting during my speech, so that is one area that I should not have to spend time on trying to improve.
  All in all I felt that I did a very good job on my speech, with the exception of going over the allotted time by twenty seconds and my forgetting to cite all of my sources.  I think that I did a good job of keeping the actual physical demonstration to being around a minute and that I fully showed in an easy to digest way how my audience could make coffee with a French press.  I think that my speech was well structured and if anything that I tried to cram too much information in to it.  I also think that I was persuasive and left a positive impression in the minds of my audience in regards to coffee.  Keeping in mind my technical mistakes I think that I would give myself a low A, maybe around a 93.

MMS

In the section of Chapter 8 that listed and described the different patterns of organization for a speech I was particularly interested by Monroe's Motivated Sequence.  In the past I have been ignorant of the different specific types of speech patterns, but have mostly used Topical and occasionally Chronological speech patterns with just a smattering of Narrative speeches in certain occasions.  Monroe's Motivated Sequence at first reminded me of the type of speech that you might here at a self help seminar.  While I think that this is exactly what would be most effective and most likely to be used in that situation, I don't think it would be fair to give it the negative connotation of associating it with self help seminars.  I am not sure that I will have the opportunity to use this speech structure in our Public Speaking class, but I was very interested in it and am hopeful to use it at some point in the future.  I think that it is a creative way to structure a speech and would be a lot of fun to use.  I always like the feeling when giving a speech that the audience is hanging on my every word and with a well written speech in this pattern and the right dynamism I feel that an audience wouldn't be able to help but be swept up in it.

I think that I have at times used the first of the five steps of getting the audience's attention by relating the topic to the audience in other speech patterns.  I think that the key step is the second step where you get the audience to realize the existence of a problem and that they lack the information to solve the problem.  If you can nail that step then you would have good momentum for giving them the information and helping them visualize how the information would help them toward a solution.  That just leaves the final step and with an enthusiastic call to action you could conclude a very powerful speech.

"We are arrows to the action." -Knapsack

I Need 10 CCs of Facts, Stat!

I believe that giving facts and statistics is most effective when used in an informative or persuasive speech.  Facts and statistics help you to establish credibility and are more likely to influence the opinion of your audience than sole use of narrative and personal opinions.  I think they are most effectively used when interspersed throughout a speech.  It is best to use a fact or statistic to reinforce something that you are saying and not to just throw out a statistic as a non sequitur or stand-alone.  It is also best not to just read off a long list of statistics or facts consecutively as it can lose the interest of your audience.

Facts and statistics are best to be used sparingly or not at all during a speech to entertain.  I also think that facts and statistics should usually be avoided in a short speech.  If you only have a limited amount of time it is best to use that time as creatively and effectively as possible.  I wouldn't say to never use a fact or statistic in a short speech, but if you do use one I think that it should be something that is easy to state very succinctly and simple for the audience to absorb.  I always keep the audience in mind when writing a fact or statistic in to a speech and consider how they will react to it.

"I see it all much clearer since; far past the point of this." -Get Up Kids

Chapter 7, Post #1

I felt like I learned quite a bit from the Speech Buddy videos for Chapter 7, especially Erin's video. One piece of useful advice that she gave was to not allow narratives to go on for too long. While a narrative can purvey information and pique the audience's interest, if you allow yourself to go off on too much of a narrative tangent you can lose focus on the main topic of your speech. Another thing that I realized can detract from a speech is the use of definitions. While giving the definition of something may help to stress the point that you are trying to get across, it will not likely change any preconceived connotations of that word or phrase that the audience brought in with them.

Something from the Chapter 8 videos that I learned can encourage audience involvement and participation is to use the Narrative Pattern as the structure for your speech. For our upcoming Demonstration Speech I think this will be a particularly good idea so that the audience feels interested and engaged during the demonstration itself. This is a good time to draw the audience in early on in the speech and hopefully provide momentum to keep them interested throughout the length of the speech. This overall structure combined with the use of a variety of transitions should lead to a successful speech.