Speech Buddies

I thought homeschooling was a good topic to talk about because a lot of people have very different opinions on this. Also I can relate to this topic because one of my sisters did a
year of homeschooling. The first speaker was for homeschooling and she stressed the importance of children attending college. She was very persuasive and believed that since family is very influencial on their child's education, then homeschool is a very good option. I agree that homeschool will prepare you for college because when my sister did homeschool for a year her grades were very high but she complained about not getting the social aspect of school which is needed I believe. As far as the second speaker, he had some persuasive points in the sense that parents have a big enough job trying to raise you why would they add on teaching. They have jobs and other things to be responsible for which is why teachers should help fill in this void.

Personally, I think that homeschooling is an option that should be determined by the child. Every child is unique and some are fit for this type of schooling while others may perform better in a school. It all depends.

Recent Persuasive Discussion

Hey Class,

Recently I had a persuasive discussion with my two other soon-to-be roommates about our apartment living situation. When we arrived at a potential apartment, we were talking to the manager and questioning the pricings and several other questions. However, my other two roommates are inexperienced and are in a rush to just get approved for an apartment now since we will have to move out of the campus apartments soon.

The lady was telling us that we had to all sign one lease and that we could not sign individual leases. I found a problem with that because there are many active court cases right now in which college students are suing their roommates because something happened and the other roommates stopped paying the rest of their lease leaving the balance on the other roommate. I asked the lady if it was possiblity for us to all get individual leases however my potential roommates were telling me to let it go and that the lady already said no.

I kept pleading my case however, and I stressed the importance of individual leasing because if anything happens I want us to be accountable for only ourselves. Finally after using cause-and-effect reasoning I was finally able to get it through my roommates heads as well as the apartment supervisor. In result we were able to sign individual leases.

Chapter 14 Useful Information

I was please that we read chapter 14 this week because it is on persuasive speaking and that is exactly what I needed to read since our speech is coming up soon. The whole chapter was filled with useful and important information however, I will narrow it down the the concepts that I liked the most. This chapter explains how to set up your topic so that you can best persuade your audience. For example you can set it up as a question (ex: should consumers buy products made in the United States?). What I also liked was "Monroe's Motivated Sequence" which is composed of five steps that require speakers to identify and respond to what will motivate the audience to pay attention. The five steps include gaining the audiences attention, establishing the need for something, satisfying the problem, helps audience members visualize an outcome and moves audience to action. If I don't do anything else I am definitely going to apply Monroe's Sequence to my next speech.

Next Speech

Hi Everybody,
The main points of my next speech include: why should you exercise, what are the potential advantages and disadvantages, and how to exercise. I plan on beginning my speech with a shocking statistic that will one get the audience's attention, and two persuade them that there needs to be a change. I plan on ending the speech by reviewing my main points and emphasizing the severity or importance of exercising. I am going to persuade my audience towards my point of view by giving factual information from credible sources that will make it easy to persuade my audience to consider my point of view. Also by explaining the advantages as well as the disadvantages it will help my audience see that I am not being bias and that I am giving all of the sides, not just the good ones. However, I feel that the positives tremendously outweigh the negatives so I am convinced that my audience will take in the information I give and hopefully apply it to their lives.

Immersed in a Sea of Persuasion

Hey Class! This is a great topic to discuss because everybody can relate. Persuasion is one of the most influential factors in decision making. In my personal life I have been persuaded by my peers, family, and sales representatives into making a decision like what to buy, what to wear, where to go, what to do, and etc. Most of the time when I was younger it was easy to persuade me because I looked up to anyone that was an adult and believed that they would give me the best and most honest advice. However as I got older, I began to realize many people are manipulative and have secret agendas in which they try to get another person to do something. Not to say all persuasion is BAD, but now I am very inquisitive and am not easily persuaded (unless it is credible and factual).

Through public speaking and mass media contexts a lot of information is presented. Most of the time the speaker fails to discuss potential negatives of the product of whatever is being represented which makes it easier for me to reject. I know nothing is perfect so unless I hear the cons I am not persuaded. However I am not close-minded so I give everyone the chance to present something to me and I will not say they are right or wrong.

To become a more critical consumer I can try to lighten my idea that "everyone has a secret agenda or is trying to get over" because that is not true. Also I think I can continue to be inquisitive because the more questions you ask to the less indeterminable you will be.

Speech Buddy Videos Response

After watching the videos, I feel that I know a lot about how to speak to an audience. I learned that it is very important to speak in a way that your audience will feel included, and understand everything you have to say especially the important concepts. A way to help your audience to feel included is to use pronouns such as "you" "I" and "us" which are words that do not exclude anyone. Because delivery is key, it is important to focus on its components which include: volume, rate, pitch, variety, pronunciation, and articulation. If you practice each of these, you will surely keep you audience interested and understanding the important concepts of you speech. Also, I learned to be conscious of your physical delivery which includes: eye contact, gestures and body language. People can easily be distracted so make sure to practice each of these things in a way that is not distracting but to enhance your speech.

Flickr

Hello All!
After viewing the comments on Flickr I was pretty interested and somewhat surprised at some of the comments that were being made about "sexist language". Although most people do not think that calling a woman a "girl” or a man a "boy" can be offensive, I can think of some situations where those terms can be pretty disrespectful. For example, if there is an older man or woman and you introduce them to someone else by saying "hi this girl/boy is (and then state their name". The older person will be offended because it will seem as though you do not respect them.

Also I can see if someone calls a girl a "tom-boy" that can be sort of sexist because that means you automatically assume that girls are supposed to dress a certain way and are not supposed to be into sports or other activities that would be considered "boy-ish".

On the other hand, I believe that terms do not necessarily have to be defined as "sexist language" because it all depends on the person’s intentions. So in conclusion I would be careful when using words that can sound "sexist" to ensure that others do not get offended.