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.