Baby Steps!

         Out of any speech I have ever given, I would say that I was the most prepared for this persuasive speech. In my initial outline, I failed to prepare a thesis statement and an adequate conclusion, something that my peer editors noted. They also provided a great amount of constructive criticism that was extremely useful in finalizing my outline and resulted in a better finished product. I used these critiques to craft my best COMM 204 speech yet. I believe I used the prefect amount of research: just enough to support my claims, but not too much that it may drown them out. Furthermore, I had more time to prepare and practice my delivery than I did for my Informative speech.

         My delivery significantly improved from the informative speech as well. I wrote less on my cards as I relied heavily on them for the first speech and did not want to allow myself to use them as a crutch. For this speech, I only wrote the order of the speech, transitions, quotes, and my thesis statement. Although I did not use the cards as frequently as I did before, I would like to continue to improve on my usage. In addition, I finally understood how important it is to rehearse your speech in advance. In my first run-through I realized that my speech was well over the time limit and seemed to be choppy. With each practice, I noticed the delivery felt more smooth and natural and fit the time requirement. Another important lesson I gathered from this experience is that speaking about a topic you are interested or passionate about makes the speech more interesting. I stumbled upon my topic of “Celebrity Privacy Rights” after Googling a list of persuasive speech topics. It peaked my interest making finding research more exciting and hopefully my excitement made the speech more stimulating.      

         In my next speech, I would like to refrain from using notecards at all. I have been using them as a crutch. Even though I feel confident and prepared, I have noticed that the presence of the cards causes me to rely them. As for the next speech, I am excited to incorporate a visual aid. Many of my classmates have used them in the first two speeches and they have been extremely effective. I hope to refrain from using too many picture or words as some of my classmates’ presentations have presented an overwhelming amount of information at once. Hopefully, in my class discussion presentation, I can present the “Don’ts” of PowerPoint from the article, “How to Avoid Death By PowerPoint.”

         Overall, I am pleased with how this speech turned out and I look forward to continuing to improve for my Visual Aid Speech!

KarpasD Sensory Aid Reflection

Well, once again all went well with my speech. This was my favorite project yet. At the start I was excited to share with the audience my one true passion. Being that way made discussing it much easier. I’ve also enjoyed seeing everyone else’s speeches improve. In the end, everybody had their own unique way of getting their point across. There were improvements, though, that were noticeable with all. In all, over this term I have become a much better public speaker. Now, I can go on and use my new skills in meaningful ways.

Well, this course sped by. Only thing there is to do now is to do this final project. I know that my project will be relevant to movie making and film. I had a lot of fun sharing my moviemaking knowledge with everyone, so lets repeat that. The great part about doing that was that I not only taught, but I also learned. Even talking about stuff I already knew took lots of research to back it up. For example, I was pretty confident at the start that Stanley Kubrick made the “steadicam” famous. In was not until I did further research, though, where I found out that he did.
The idea will come to me. In the meantime I’ve got another paper due. Being in the library thinking about something else will help me think of ideas for this final project. For now I am just happy that I completed most of this course with some great success. Thanks, Cynthia!

Sensory Aid Speech: Twitter #Hashtags

I just gave my sensory aid, or visual aid, speech on Twitter hashtags! I definitely came out of it feeling really good and this is probably the first time after a speech where I felt a sense of true confidence in my delivery and topic. I think it has to do with the fact that social media is literally a huge aspect of my professional career and so therefore this is a topic that I am actively engaged. Creating the three types of hashtags, in-group, sudden large-scale world impact, and reoccurring hashtag to talk about made it a lot easier to not only follow but teach to the class. I really enjoyed using Twitter to accompany my speech because the interaction would make the class more familiar with the platform and it was a lot easier to show real life examples instead of just having screenshots of the hashtags and search engine. I also really enjoyed having to pivot or improvise with the currently trending hashtags when showing examples since I did not know #FridayFeeling with the photo of the cute pig would be the one that I end up using as an example for replying, retweeting, and favoriting.
In terms of constructive criticism for myself, I do wish that I could have looked at the screen less because that takes away from the eye contact and engagement that I could have with the audience. When giving visual aid speeches with a live platform, like Twitter, I think it would nice to have a smaller screen in front of me so that I can know what I am doing when I am typing and clicking on things but still ensure that I am facing the audience and not just turning back and forth.
Making and presenting this speech was such a positive experience for me and it really helped me realize that it is so important to be excited about what you are presenting and to have passion for what you talk about. This leads me to think that it is extremely important on a larger scale with my job and what I do because in order for me to be enthusiastic and do a great job, I have to enjoy and believe in what I am doing.

"Why Isn't it called ludicrous speed" Tesla P85D reflection

It's not called ludicrous speed, probably because Elon would get sued by Mel Brooks. Out of all the speeches, this was by far my favorite to do. The amazement on your faces when I showed the second video is why I (and the class) chose this topic; Not only do I find it personally interesting, but I knew that you would also find it interesting. It's a revolutionary car as I mentioned, all wrapped up in a beautiful package.

What I think I did good on this project is my visual aids. Many hours spent sitting behind my computer slaving on Premiere Pro paid off, me thinks. Furthermore I picked a topic the class had wanted me to talk about, so there's that too.

The worst thing about my project? Timing. I went over. Also I stuttered and forgot to add one extra bit information. The acceleration on the Tesla hits over 1.3G from 0-24 mph. That's more G's than freefall, to you skydivers.

What I learned while making this project is that just a few years ago, before the Model S and supercharging, the future of the electric car was bleak. And it still is unless you have a Model S. (Trust me, I'd never buy any other electric car because they can't supercharge).

Oh, and if you read my last blog, where I said "This wasn't what I had originally intended to be my topic for the persuasive speech. That topic, however is going to be my visual speech (I wasn't able to get the visual aids on time). ", Sorry. That wasn't actually what I had intended to do, as I had to delay it. But it will be my Final project, because it's the most important one of all.

Is being persuasive being passionate?

If there is a single realization I had about preparing and delivering a persuasive speech, it is that there must be a passion for the topic or issue. For instance, I am passionate about immigration issues with especially when it comes to educational opportunities for undocumented students. This is why I decided to prep a persuasive speech on the benefits of the DREAM Act. In doing so, I was hoping to inform my audience about the DREAM Act and how it can help undocumented students improve their quality of life and as a result improve the nation. Because I have a passion for the topic, I was able to craft an argument in a way that refuted all the opposition arguments towards the DREAM Act. I directly assessed concerns and provided evidence supporting the benefits of the DREAM Act.

At the same time, being a firm supporter of the act allowed me to employ logos, ethos and pathos in my arguments. I would employ my facts and statistics to illustrate my points. My points would be based on ethics and civil rights, and they were presented in a way meant to appeal to the emotions of the audience. That is when my passion for the topic influenced my delivery- it was in my appeal to the pathos. I have no evidence that the members of my audience were moved or impacted but that was my intention. That brings me to the actual delivery of my speech.

Compared to the informational speech, the persuasive speech was a stronger speech. A common issue I had in both was the timing, which comes down to not dividing my time equally on my points. My points for this speech were more concise and had parallel structure compared to the lengthy and complex points I had in my informational speech. When it comes to actually speaking, I controlled my voice level and tempo more including control over inflections. I felt confident and comfortable speaking to the audience about a topic I stand strongly behind and know plenty of. My visual PowerPoint slides had more content than what they should have, but it is definitely something to fix for my visual aid speech. I want to step it up for the last speech and deliver effectively and on time. I have made enough mistakes in my past speeches to conceptualize what I need to modify.

Persuasive Speech: Dance

For this speech I have decided to do a topic on something I have a strong passion for.  I wanted to see how my delivery would be effected if I was talking about something I knew a lot about.  Although it was a topic that I had lots of information about, I found that the hardest thing about this speech was to figure out what to say about dancing that would interest people who don't have any experience in dance at all.  I felt that many of the topics I was talking about applied more to people who dance or want to get more serious about dancing instead of targeting non-dancers.  To avoid the audience from losing interest, I tried to make the delivery a bit more dynamic and added a handful of visual aids.  Regarding visual aids, when I first decided to do the topic of dance, I told myself to not rely on dancing.  This idea seemed like a double-edged sword where I was able to do a speech rather than a performance, however my audience probably expected dancing right when they hear the topic.

For my three main points of discussion were, in order of presentation: dance carries emotion, the different textures of movement, and the moves that make up dancing.  I decided that these topics together were the best thing to talk about because personally I found these topics to not be common knowledge about dance but at the same time should be common knowledge for anyone wanted to know more about dance.

Another hard thing about this speech was finding appropriate academic sources.  While looking for dance specific research, I found practically nothing.  Because of this, I decided to turn towards psychology research done with the use of dance.  Due to the situation, I thought this to be the most appropriate substitute.

When I finally got up there to do the actual speech, I felt less nervous than normal.  After being up there a couple of times it definitely gets easier.  In terms of delivery, I felt my words carry more confidently and in turn made me seem more credible.  Something I found interesting was that as a dancer doing choreography I feel comfortable letting moves go one after another without even thinking too much.  When I used my visual aids, it acted as cues and the next time to say in my speech automatically popped into my mind.

In conclusion, I'd say this was the most enjoyable speech to make so far due to the topic.  I felt more comfortable speaking about something I have lots of personal knowledge about and using visual aid such as dancing made me feel more in place then having to speak for the whole time.

A step closer to the recycling bin

Well it happened. I finally focused on my thesis. Not my topic, but my actual thesis. From this speech I grounded myself to the primary question: why are water bottles so bad for the environment and for humans health in general? My anecdote about my father (hopefully) grabbed the audience's attention, because lets face it my father's life is a lot crazier than my own. The intro video provided the necessary mind shift or reversal of roles. The video also subtly introduced the idea that disposable water bottles not only pollute the environment, but tamper with human's health as well.  However, the video might have been a little too long and possibly lead to me not being able to finish my speech in the time allotted.  I would say my points were pretty spot on as to why disposable water bottles (at least in the USA) are unnecessary and detrimental to our own health. However, yes I forgot about certain sections of the world. My ignorance to other parts of the world, that in general need water bottles as a sustainable source of hydration, diminished my speech a bit. As I mentioned earlier, I did run out of time when doing my speech. I had rehearsed the speech multiple times and knew I was running the danger of going overtime. I got a little nervous near the end, but I was able to take a deep breath and recover from the anxiety. I managed to conclude with the same point that I started my speech with: the story of my dad. Although, it was very rushed. For this I think I didn't quite stick the landing like a Shawn Johnson or a Nastia Luiken would; however one day, if I keep trying, I will get there.

Goals for next speech: 1) Don't run out of time, 2) try to incorporate the audience more in terms of statistics, 3) Try to add more road maps and verbal cues into the speech