Speech Buddies

After watching the two videos "Drinking" and "Light Pollution", I noticed some positive as well as negative aspects in both.

In the drinking video, Matthew talks about the dangers of drinking and driving and he gives statistics showing the accident rates of drinking. He also used an overheard, which I think is perfect for visual because in case people get lost are confused, they can always refer to the notes. Matthew did a great job presenting his purpose, which was to teach people about drinking responsibly to avoid tragedies and accidents.

The light pollution video was kind of boring. Although she explained what she was talking about which was light pollution and how we are affected by it, nothing really caught my attention.

Basically from these videos I learned to have good visual aids and to look attentive and not nervous.

Helpful Chapter Information

This chapter was mainly the key to successful speaking. Although there were many helpful concepts in this chapter I am only going to talk about a few. I really liked the many different topics about the audience because it shows that the audience is very important and it is not all about you! The main thing I liked in the audience sections was the section connecting to a diverse audience because most audiences these days are diverse so I found that paragraph to be extremely helpful. In fact our class is probably diverse as well so I will be able to use this on the class. Also something that stood out in this chapter was trustworthiness. An audience is more attentive to a speaker that seems credible and this chapter explained that trustworthiness is key. I agree with that because if someone speaking was constantly contradicting themselves, I know for a fact I would be turned off from the message and automatically assume the speaker is not credible. This chapter was very helpful and I plan on using most if not all of the concepts that were mentioned.

Audience Analysis and Audience Adaption

It is very important to analyze and adapt to the audience you are speaking in front of because these are the people that can benefit from your information. To analyze your audience is to study the audience you are speaking to and plan accordingly. You're probably thinking what do you mean plan accordingly? There are several ways of planning based of a variety of aspects of the audience. A few of those aspects include race, gender, culture, and age. Although there are other ways to target you audience these are the top four that I think if properly targeted, you will gain your audience's attention and keep it. For example if you were speaking in front of a group of kindergardeners, you would make sure to keep there attention and talk about things that are fun as well as have a lot of props that way you can keep them engaged. Because I am going to be speaking in front of people that are around my age, I know that I can speak at a higher level since we are all educated and also I will use a lot of methods of attention grabbing because I know people especially at this age tend to get bored and uninterested very quickly.

Useful Chapter Information

There is a lot of useful information in this chapter but I will narrow it down to the research section. I liked in the introduction of the chapter how research was introduced as exploring new territory and using the right navigation tools. I know most people rely on the internet now-a-days for information that might not even be obtainable. This chapter was very good in the fact that it has a lot of information on how to prepare a research topic. I liked the Prepare Gather Gather Gather and Evaluate because to me it puts emphasis on how important it is to gather information from different resources. I liked how this chapter also broke down the Sources into Primary and Secondary because that really specified the differences of the sources. Although this chapter also talked about conducting the speech the information on research and pre-speech preparation really helped me because that is usually the part where I struggle the most.

Chapter 6 Video

The two main topics I got out of the videos were research and speech tips. I learned that there are so many different types of ways to research a topic on the web rather than your typical search engines such as google and lycos. Also, there are ways to search information based on questions you have. That is very helpful because asking questions is a lot more specific than just simply typing in a phrase and hoping to get the right results. I loved how in the video Gastropods, the speaker started out with a dream and then went right along into the speech. I think that it is important to have a unique opener that will draw your reader in because a big objective of speaking is to keep your audience engaged. I have already thought of a great opener for our first speech and hope that it will grab my class' attention.

Discussion Week 4.1 Research Interviews

Conducting research interviews can be a lot of work however a lot of vital information can be obtained that way. When I was in high school I had to interview a relative that was alive during the time of oppression. Because most of my relatives live in Michigan, I had no close relatives to talk to that were alive during that time. In fact the only people that are still alive and were living in those harsh conditions are my great grandparents. Because they live so far, I conducted a phone interview which was actually very successful. The first thing I did was make an outline of what information I needed, and then brainstormed some questions targeted to the information. Also I included some small talk that would have my great grandfather more engaged in the conversation; since we are not very close relatives I wanted him to feel as comfortable as possible. I think the best aspects of the research interview process is to ask questions that are on target and to make the interviewee feel as comfortable as possible that way all the information can be easily obtained.