Importance of Supporting Materials

Chapter 7 gave a wide variety of ways to support the foundation of your speech and make it really stand out. I liked seeing how many different ways you can add depth to a speech. Narratives can help the speaker identify with the audience on a personal level. Examples can make an idea make more sense and make the audience understand on a deeper level. Definitions help clarify concepts in the speech. Testimonials can back up the ideas you are trying to get across to the audience, they are like having someone to back you up. Facts and statistics help establish credibility with the speaker as well as show the amount of effort that went into the development of the speech. Also seeking communications media can enhance a speech by providing another source to explain your topic. I think a great speech is a balance of a few of these materials. I really enjoy narratives, where a speaker relates his/her topic to something personal. I also like to hear statistics because it helps me put things into numerical perspective. Using just one method can take away from a speech, so it is important to establish a balance between the speakers own ideas and a variety of types of support. After reading the chapter I felt that I had learned a lot about something I knew was a part of a good speech but did not know the exact terms or uses.

Using Facts and Statistics

As Chapter 7 told us, facts and statistics must be used with care. While both can definitely enhance your speech, they can also hurt it if used inappropriately. It is important to use them when you are trying to appeal to the audiences logic. If I am trying to convince my audience of something, or to teach them about it, facts and statistics about that subject can help back me up. It adds credibility to the speaker. I find that speakers who use statistics effectively can help the audience visualize a number that puts what he/she is trying to say into context. The speech buddy video we watched about drinking and driving had some statistics that made the facts make more sense as we had numbers to visualize. Too many facts or statistics can make a speech dull. If an audience hears too many numbers, or is overwhelmed with facts, they will quickly lose interest and miss the point of the speech. Statistics can be especially tricky. When I hear speakers or read statistics I wonder if they have been taken out of context or slanted to fit the theme. Without seeing the whole picture that led to a statistic it can be hard to trust it. Facts can be the same way, a speaker can provide facts that help lead to a conclusion that may or may not be accurate depending on the point of view. I think facts and statistics are a necessary part of an effective, memorable speech. They show that the speaker did some research, they can add credibility to the content of the speech, and they give the audience a closer connection to the subject. At the same time they need to be used only to highlight or augment the speech, not be the main body, and they should be straightforward. Moderation is the key!

Getting it Together

Developing, organizing, researching and getting this next speech together has been much harder than I expected it to be. Watching this weeks videos, especially for Chapter 8, has been helpful. I have to admit I did not get much out of the videos for Chapter 7. I found the speeches to be slow and not very engaging, and with the one about painting Chris seemed so nervous I found myself distracted by feeling sorry for him. For Chapter 8 I really liked how organized Ganiel Singh was with his speech about how to become a pediatrician. He did an excellent job of setting up what he was planning on informing his audience about, giving the main points he planned on covering, and going into concise detail on each point. He also took the time to restate his main points, helping the listener remember what he had spoken about and making his speech more engaging. I also liked how he used his sources in his speech, citing some statistics from a renowned pediatrician in Louisiana as well reinforcing his own credibility by mentioning that he has worked as a volunteer at a hospital. I thought his speech was very well planned out and easy to follow and retain. The next speech by Cara Langus was a narrative speech telling her story involving being left on a doorstep by her parents. Cara's story was very compelling, and she also set up her main points and developed them in a well thought out way. Comparing the 2 speeches I found hers to be more entertaining and I liked that it was organized but not in as obvious a way as Ganiel's speech. Cara spoke in a more conversational way, but with structure. Because her speech was a narrative speech and her goal was to tell a story, and Ganiel's speech was to inform, I would say that each did an excellent job meeting their goal.

Audience-speaker relationship

This weeks reading added another aspect of research that needs to be done in order to give a memorable speech. I honestly had not given much thought to the importance of knowing the audience that you are going to be speaking to. I feel lucky that for this class my first audience I will be learning to public speak to will all be students like myself. We all have a similar lifestyle being in school, although we have different backgrounds. Our culture speeches helped me to learn more about individuals in the class. I started writing my demonstration speech and I have been trying to keep in mind what I know about people in our class and some things that might link us as students. Outside of all of us being students we are also linked in that we live in the same area of CA. There were some parents in the class, and I'm sure many or most people also work outside of the home. I'm not sure how similar our psychographics are, although the blog posts and comments are a good way to find out more about individual beliefs and values. Its going to be a juggling act to write this speech, incorporate the research citations, and tie in what I know about the audience all at the same time. At the same time its a fun challenge, and a lot easier as we at least know we are all students at Sierra College. Good luck everyone!

Drinking Speech Video

This video was a good example of an informative speech using a variety of sources, overhead projection, and facts in such a way that a speaker/ audience relationship is developed. I have to admit I did not care for his introduction with pretending to throw up, although I guess it got my attention. His overall speech was good, and he did have a lot of interesting statistics about drinking to add to his credibility as a speaker. One thing I really liked was how he took the statistics he found concerning negative effects of drinking and translated them into what effect they would have on the number of people in the class. For instance he noted that according to the rate of people injured in a car accident involving alcohol 4 people out of the class would be in an accident that night. That made the statistics real and showed how they applied to his audience. He also did this with physical effects of long term binge drinking and shared that most college students (his audience) today drink to get drunk. I did find that I could not help comparing his speech to the girl who gave the slug speech. I felt like he was reading his citations, while hers were worked so well into her speech that she just seemed like an expert. Also when he used the overhear projection I thought it would have been more effective to have less words, maybe some graphics or charts that would have given a visual representation of what he was saying. The way he did it you were simply reading what he was saying. It did say he was from an Introduction to Public Speaking class, and I'm sure my first Informative speech will have some glitches. Overall I got the idea of how to give a speech, engage and include your audience, and work your topic to relate to your audience.

Audiences

I know personally when hearing a person speak to a group if they say something that makes me feel a part of what they are talking about I am more apt to listen. I loved how the book used Bill Gates as an example, taking time to research the schools before he spoke to them and to mention something in the beginning of his speech that connected them to his company. Its easy to get caught up in just focusing on your topic and the speech itself, and to forget that a big part of a speech is the speaker/audience relationship. I liked the idea of making a questionnaire that you sent to you audience prior to the speech, that would give you some ideas about what your audience is like, how they feel about your topic, and what they expect to get out of your speech. I also thought it was interesting to consider our multitasking, immediate gratification culture of texting, YouTube, and the internet. Audiences today expect dynamic, entertaining, concise information. We know some things about our class, the audience we will be speaking to, from the fact that we are all students and we all live in the same area. It is also nice that each speech we do we will get to know our audience member even better. The more a speaker is able to familiarize herself with the audience and to mold the speech around that audiences demographics, values, psychographics, attitudes and beliefs the more effective and memorable the speech will be.

Dreading Research

For some reason every time I am assigned a research paper I immediately dread doing the research. I love to write, string the research together, and prove my thesis but I hate actually doing the research. Reading Chapter 2 made me a little less apprehensive, as it helped me realize that I make doing research harder than it has to be. I tend to go for it before refining my topic and deciding exactly what I will be looking for. I also tend to start with broad internet searches that do not hep me narrow down my topic. So many internet sources are not reliable and it can be hard to tell which ones are. This time I am going to try to do things right and see if the research is still as painful as it usually is to me. I am going to sit down and write out my topic, decide what I know about the topic already and what I need to know through research, and then  I am going to go to the library. For some reason I always want to avoid the library, even though I could most likely find all that I need in a day as opposed to grueling sifting through of websites that are mostly junk. The Chapter had some good advice for search engines, web directories, and deep web recommendations to use when doing internet research. Hopefully this time around the research will be the easiest part of my speech.

Slug Speech

For this weeks videos I especially enjoyed the slug speech. I have never given a speech with research sources being cited, so it was helpful to see that being done. Her speech was effective at getting the audiences attention, and she was very confident in her subject matter. It was a long video but I found myself interested in what she was teaching. The way she cited her sources in the speech was very subtle, but it added to her credibility. The video with the girl speaking about her grandparents was also helpful. I assume she interviewed her family members, and her speech was very engaging and detailed. She must have been an effective interviewer to have such a dense speech. The last video made me think of how lucky and unlucky we are to have the internet. For our speech sources it is important to know our sources credibility and currency. Since anyone can access and post things to the web, there is a lot of false information out there. I admit I have been guilty of searching for the answer to a question that I think I know the answer to, and feeling good when I find the same answer online even though I know  nothing about the source it came from. Using the library, print resources that have been evaluated by a community of experts/editors, or online resources only from reputable organizations is important. I feel a little more confident about how to plan out this next speech with our sources included. We'll see how it goes when I start doing the research!

Interview Experience

I have to admit I have had little to no experience with interviewing people. Unless you count interviewing owners/teachers at preschools when I was choosing a school for my kids. While I did not set up a formal structure for the interviews like the book described, I did do some of the things recommended inadvertently. I chose my interviewees-- people in managerial/decision making roles at the schools. I had an interview guide, which is a set of questions I wanted to ask and more detailed questions about the ones I wanted more answers to. My primary questions were things like "what is your schools daily schedule with the children?" When told that at a certain time of the day it was nap time, a secondary question may have been "if my child doesn't nap what do they do during that part of the day?" I may have wanted to ask a leading question like "You prefer healthy snacks to be sent with the children right?" Instead I hope I chose a neutral question like "what kind of snacks do you prefer the kids to bring?" Neutral questions are better for making the interviewee feel comfortable and talkative. Its interesting to compare what I remember of these experiences I have had with the formal set up of an interview in the book. If I ever had to conduct an interview again I would take more time to write out my questions and potential secondary questions, think about how I would initially welcome my interviewee, and I would pay more attention to the tone in which the questions were answered. After reading Chapter 6 I would feel comfortable interviewing a source if that comes up for our next speech.

Organizing Your Speech

Chapter 4 was very helpful for me in planning out, writing, and practicing my speech. I have never taken a public speaking class so for the Culture speech I didn't know where to begin. I started with trying to write a paper and memorize it, but that wasn't working because every time I would practice I would forget part and freeze up. After reading Chapter 4 I started by deciding what I was trying to do with my speech-- to inform. Then I had a brainstorming session and jotted down some ideas I wanted to convey. I developed a thesis, which I did write out word for word. In developing my thesis I considered my audience-- how much they would already know about my topic and what they would enjoy hearing about. Then I worked on an outline. When I started practicing this time I tried to go from my outline, treating it like a list of ideas that I would elaborate on for a friend. I have always loved to write, so going into the speech without writing it out first was new for me. I did write out the introduction and conclusion, but left the outline in main idea form to help me develop my own thoughts without feeling like I would forget things. It helps with this first speech that it is about a culture we identify with, so most of us are going to be interested in our topics. I don't think practicing 7 times is enough for me though, hopefully I will feel more confident tomorrow!

Speech Buddy Thoughts

Watching the interactive videos that correspond to Chapter 2 and 4 helped make more sense out of what I read in the book this week. Seeing students my age discuss the strategies for reducing anxiety was helpful. I especially liked the different breathing techniques and seeing them demonstrated. I do a lot of releasing tension breathing, although I did not known the technical name for it. The video of Jessica's speech was very inspiring. I loved how she took her topic and developed a very interesting analogy to describe her feelings on having a brother with Downs Syndrome. Creativity is very important to keep your audience's attention and to help them grasp your message. The book talks about brainstorming, just jotting down ideas that pop into your head in the beginning stages of planning a speech. I imagine Jessica was doing that when she saw the connection between ending up in Holland instead of Italy and the news that her mother was carrying a baby boy with a disorder. One thing I noticed about Jessica was how she used to hands while she was speaking. She would emphasize her main points with her hands, as a person who was just having a very natural conversation with a friend would do. I found this video to be helpful in seeing ways to present a topic that are not conventional as well as being aware of how powerful body language can be for improving your speech.

Overcoming anxiety

I have to admit I am more nervous after finishing Chapter 2 than I was going in! I had not considered a lot of things that contribute to public speaking anxiety, like being unfamilar with the space, being nervous after giving the speech, and media malfunctions. It makes sense that a large part of public speaking nervousness stems from the aspects of the moment that are unfamiliar. I feel that visualization, relabeling, and relaxation are excellent tools to fight anxiety. I have already been walking myself through each step of the speech, although being a hybrid class we are at a disadvantage seeing as we have only had one night physically in the classroom. My fear is that I will confidently walk to the front of the class, turn around, and upon seeing everyone's eyes on me waiting to hear my speech will go completely blank. Hopefully practice, visualization, relabeling, relaxation and having my notecard will prevent this from happening. Just breathe, smile, and start talking!