Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Persuasive Speeches
Nice effort on our persuasive speeches. I enjoyed the creativity and audience adaptation of your topics and supporting evidence. Please post by next Tuesday, April 5 your self critique of this speech. Remember that I am most concerned with the development of the argument. What did you do when preparing your argument? How will did you meet the objectives of a persuasive speech? What could you have done to created a stronger argument?
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After giving my second speech in this class, I felt a lot more comfortable with talking in front of the class. I was more at ease giving my speech, and was able to talk slower because of it. I felt I excelled in my presentation of the argument. When I was addressing the college kids, I needed to focus on how buying a hybrid car could save you money and help the environment, which are two issues that college kids care a lot about. Focusing on those issues, I believe helped keep the presentation interesting and the audience engaged. I also think my introduction was done well because it grabbed the audience’s attention. Not just showing the dollars per gallon but also bringing it full circle by putting it in terms of a 15-gallon tank so the audience could really see how expensive gas was getting. Finally, I believe my visual aids enhanced my argument. Displaying the chart that showed how much gas has risen over the past three years; brought out the idea that gas was only going to get more expensive so consumers should seriously consider buying a hybrid car.
One improvement I would try and make in my persuasive speech is to have a bigger action step. With this speech, I thought it to be more of a challenge because I was not trying to get people to buy a car. In further persuasive speeches, I would try and make the action step more obvious and easy to perform for the listeners. Aside from fixing the action step, I think the biggest improvement I need in my speech making is to be able to connect better with the audience using my voice. After making the speech, my friend told me how my voice when I am in a casual conversation and my public speaking voice sound totally different. The Wednesday after making my speech, I made another speech for high school students. I talked for about 10 minutes about the challenges of teamwork and how to overcome them. When I was talking to these high school students, I felt like the presentation was less formal, so I was talking in more of a casual tone. I also didn’t know exactly what I was going to say before I went up there, which I believed helped me to sound more conversational. Therefore, for future speeches, I will really practice on just talking out the conversation to a friend as opposed to presenting it to them in a more formal manner. Additionally, I will be more conversational in the next two speeches because I cannot be fully prepared with what I will be saying in these impromptu speeches. Overall, I feel that I have mastered the presentation of a well-outlined speech, now I must work on the delivery being more conversational and less formal.
After giving my second speech I felt more comfortable and confident in front of the class while giving my speech. My speech was about prescription drug abuse and while coming up with my topic I was trying to think of my audience and about a topic I would be able to argue my point of view on that my audience would be able to relate to. I felt really strongly about my topic and I think that also helped in my delivery of my persuasive speech. When I first chose my topic I thought about all the research I did and how this topic affects people in my age group and that’s how I begun to start my argument. At first I had to focus on the argument and take a clear stand on my point of view of the issue of prescription drug abuse. After I figured out my direct argument on this topic I had to think about Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. I needed to come up with a great attention step, which is something I successfully did within my persuasive speech. I had to think of the needs of my audience and show how the problem is relevant in their lives, I did this by bringing in stories from my hometown and why this problem is significant in our lives. Then I needed to provide my audience with viable solutions to solve the issue and to help the audience visualize the solution. The next step was to call to action and tell the audience what actions they could personally take. This is the step I needed to work on, although I provided my audience with an event they can partake in I should have given more options and visual evidence of different actions they can take to help the prescription drug epidemic.
My credibility in my introduction needed to be an actual piece of interesting information I found within my research and not just stating the research I did and where I found my information. I also needed to not rely on my note cards as much, which would help enhance my eye contact with my audience. Although my eye contact was good when I was looking at my audience members, when I needed to look at my note cards I lost my eye contact. All of these changes would help create a stronger argument. Also planning out my argument and creating a plan of action for my audience my argument would have been more persuading and successful.
I picked a pretty hard topic for persuasion. Not only is marijuana use very controversial, but it was also hard to take a lot of confusing biological information and data and “tone it down” to the audience’s level. I came across so many scientific studies that were too hard to understand, and I felt the concept would be lost if I tried to reiterate them.
While preparing the speech, I searched many recent news articles from Google Scholar. These were written in a language that was easy to understand, so I was better able to summarize the major benefits of medical marijuana from the news articles. As I researched, I thought of ways that I could grab the audience’s attention. For example, I thought my best point was how a common drug like Advil is known to have very serious side effects, and the very worst adverse effects from marijuana are comparable. I hoped that the audience would be amazed by how a seemingly harmless drug can be “just as bad” as marijuana.
I felt that I wrote a very persuasive speech for the audience. However, the material was just very difficult to organize and explain once I got up there. I kept forgetting which part I wanted to say next, because I knew I had my speech organized the best way, and I didn’t want to mess that up. I knew if I really messed the sequence up, the disorder would have confused the audience and my persuasive message would have been lost.
I tried searching for YouTube clips that supported my argument, but none were really that strong to include and did not complement the points that I was making. YouTube clips always grab the audience’s attention so I was disappointed I didn’t find a good one to create a stronger argument. Also, a lot of the ideas of why marijuana is “not that bad” and should be dispensed by pharmacies were my own opinions, so finding authors to support that was difficult. Most articles were just about the proposed laws or how marijuana works. I did have supporting information cited in my outline, but I accidentally skipped over them while speaking. Overall, I was slightly disappointed that I did not deliver the speech as well as I wanted, but I’ll take it as a learning experience!
I thought my second speech in class had some really great points and some bad points as well.
I felt extremely comfortable going up in front of the class again to give a speech and I think it really showed. I was calm and collected and I tried my hardest not to talk too much with my hands and pace around. I think when evaluating just the delivery of my speech, I did an excellent job. I took my time and went a lot slower. I tried my hardest to engage my audience by asking multiple questions and keeping them involved. I also tried to adapt to them by speaking to them as how the D.R.E.A.M act would help all of us benefit as members of the United States. I also thought I did a very good job following the outline to the persuasive speech. I did every need, plan, and practicality in order so my speech flowed very nicely.
However, on the other hand, although my speech was outlined correctly, it presented flaws.
I researched this speech for quite some while, but it was only until Professor Mcmanimon said something to me in class when I realized I should have presented objections to my plans. There were a few flaws in my argument. For example, when I presented the statement that allowing young immigrants to go to college would ultimately create more revenue for the United States, I forgot to show all the ways that they would pay for this higher education. Although parts would come from themselves, a huge chunk would come from the state. Therefore, it wouldn’t be as much revenue as some of the studies concluded. What I should have done was present some objections that people in the audience may be thinking and try to counter act those objections.
In addition to making sure there are no flaws in my argument, I think I need to work on looking less at my note cards and the power point slides. I think I rely on both my note cards and the power point slides when I get stuck on a point or forget what I want to say and I think I just need to take my time and try to formulate what I want to say next instead of automatically looking down at my note cards. I think next time what I will do is practice in my dorm with no note cards to assure that even if I do get stuck or mess up, I have no note cards to rely on. I think by doing these things I will not only improve my delivery but improve my argument as well.
This speech was different from the last in many ways. Mainly, we were trying to convince someone to take our side of an opinion and then also get them to take action. This is opposed to our first speech where we simply informed our audience about a topic. After our informative speeches, I found out that I had to focus on improving my eye contact with the audience as well as work on looking at my note cards less. I think that I accomplished both of these things with the persuasive speech, through practice and also self-motivation talks. I felt more confident going into this speech, and that really helped.
To prepare for the persuasive speech, I did a lot of research on the internet and also through ebscohost. I found a lot of really good quotes that I was able to incorporate into my speech. However, as someone in class pointed out, some of the information that I used was more than five years old, so it was hard to trust it. Next time, I will do a better job at using more recent articles. Also, once I looked at everyone else's PowerPoints and compared them to mine, I thought that mine was lacking in drawing attention. I do think, however, that I have done a good job to sticking to the 6 by 6 rule and only putting relevant information in my slides. Still, I have yet to use a youtube video, and I would like to try that next time. I think that the people who used youtube videos for their persuasive speeches did a really good job using really effective and attention-grabbing videos that really captured my attention and made me interested in their topic.
I thought that my outline followed Monroe's Motivated Sequence very well. I worked really hard to purposefully place information where I thought it belonged and where I thought it would be most appropriate and effective to say it. However, I think that when I was presenting, some of my information got lost because it sounded like I was not able to give as effective of a persuasive speech as I had planned in my outline. I know that Professor McManimon asked what my need was, which I thought was clearly stated in my outline. This helped me realize that I need to work harder to make my purpose, need, and plan very clear when giving a persuasive speech.
In preparing for this speech, I knew I would be more persuasive if I was honestly passionate about the subject I was presenting. This is why I chose to speak about drug market intervention strategies, because as a Criminology major, it is a topic which I have been very involved in researching for some time now. In constructing my argument, I made a great deal of effort to follow Monroe’s Motivated Sequence. I felt that one of my strong points was that I very clearly laid out the need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. In addition, I felt that of all the steps, my action step was the strongest and contributed most to making my argument really solid. Since the issue of open air drug markets is something I have been working on for my senior research project, I have put together a proposal that I will be sending out to the Mayor of Newark addressing the problem. Obviously, it would not be realistic for my classmates to draft similar proposals and having them send copies themselves might be a bit much. That was why I thought it would be a good idea to give the class an opportunity to sign a petition which will accompany my proposal. Signing it would not only be an effective way for them to show their support, but it is also an easy way to get involved without much inconvenience. This idea worked, as several classmates did in fact ask to sign after class was over.
One of the things that I think I really could have done better and would have made my argument much stronger was my attention getter. Attention getters are definitely one of the most important aspects of your speech because if you do not engage your audience from the beginning, you will have a difficult time maintaining their interest throughout the entire presentation. Compared to my last speech, I felt that my attempt at an attention getter was an improvement; however it still needs some work. There are definitely some students in class who are really creative in coming up with different ways to engage the audience and I could definitely learn from them. Next time, I will be sure to spend more time trying to come up with an interesting way to begin my speech so that everyone is engaged right from the start.
Another way I could have made my argument stronger would be to stress the benefits a bit more. With a topic like this, it is easy for an audience of college students to feel that it does not affect them and therefore they should not care. The majority of students at TCNJ are not from the poor, urban communities suffering from this problem, so it is something they find themselves unable to relate to. This was why I placed a heavy emphasis on the City of Newark and how making it a safer place would benefit us because of all it has to offer including graduate schools, public transportation, and the business district. I definitely would have liked to elaborate on this more, however I also had to keep in mind the time constraints of this speech. In the allotted 5-7 minutes, I did the best I could to show the class that helping the City of Newark is really in all of our best interests.
Since this was our second speech, it was definitely a lot less nerve-wracking than the first time. As a result, I felt much more comfortable getting up in front of the room and speaking. I think this showed because, compared to my last speech, I believe my delivery was improved. I definitely talked slower, which made my argument much easier to understand and follow. I also was careful to maintain eye contact with the audience, which helped me connect with them. Of course, I could definitely do better, but I am glad that I have made some progress in this regard as well.
I felt my second speech was better than my first. I tried smiling more and being more energetic, which was a main problem the first time around. Also, my leg didn't uncontrollably shake, which is a plus. I think my argument was pretty good, considering the fact that I've had so many terrible things happen to me/my housemates that I was sort of an expert on my topic, 'the dangers of living off campus'. I felt I had my audience engaged (hopefully!) and judging by the feedback at the end, I'd say I'm pretty proud of myself. A few things I'd work on- 1. I needed a stronger course of action at the end. Instead of having people email President Gitenstein individually, I should have had a petition written up for people to sign. 2. I needed to show the benefits for my audience. Some of the students may not have seen any reason to make a stand against this. Easy things to fix in the future. Woo!
I definitely felt more confident for my second speech, however, there are always improvements. My speech essentially focused on the use of biodegradable products and to urge the audience to 'go green' through practical measures (change household products and packaging products to biodegradable resources). I felt that I definitely adhered to Monroe's sequence however, I could have made stronger transitions to make the ideas flow more smoothly. In order to make my argument stronger, I felt that I did well in using images to portray how much waste was harming the environment. Also, I felt confident in my 'action' part with my contact information as well as the inclusion of local community service participation schedule. Furthermore, I felt that my introduction was well organized and my thesis was clear. I feel that the clarity of the thesis is one of the most important factors in making a speech excellent, since it answers the question from the audience, “What's in it for me?”
As for the improvements, I could have (as mentioned in the top paragraph) used stronger transitions in between my two problems. Also, I spoke way too fast during this speech which was surprising since I spoke at a well pace for my first speech. I think I spoke too fast mainly because I wanted to stick to my time frame. Mine ran a little longer during rehearsals so I tried to shorten it however, there is a better alternative than speaking faster since the listeners then have a hard time following my speech. Moreover, I could have had a stronger conclusion- it could have been much more succinct and to the point rather than a number of sentences emphasizing how important it is to use biodegradable products. Last time, I spoke less to the audience and spoke more looking at the powerpoint slides, however I tried to minimize that for this speech. I'm not sure if I was completely successful however this time, I think I engaged more with the audience through eye contact.
I enjoyed preparing for the speech because we got to choose the topic of our presentation. My topic related to the audience in that it was practical and addressed one of the major issues in the society today-environmental pollution. In essence, this speech definitely helped me prepare for future persuasive speeches especially for any upcoming real-world job presentations in the future.
After my second speech, I believe that I improved my eye contact with the audience. I also fell more comfortable in front of the room giving a speech because I stayed in one spot and didn’t pace around like my last speech. I also had a relatable issue with my audience. This made my speech much stronger because we all are college students that face the issue of communication. My outline and my speech flowed well with the Monroe’s sequence, which made it even more effective. I also cited on my powerpoint really well so that I wouldn't plagiarize someone else's work.
I need to work on the speed of my speech. I spoke way to fast and it made it hard for my audience to absorb all of the information that I said. In order to fix that issue, I need to write a reminder on my notecards to breathe and talk slower. I also need to work on my transitions because I skipped a couple of them throughout the speech. This impaired the impact of my speech since I just jumped from one topic to the next without many transitions. In order to fix that I can rehearse my speech more in front of an audience, so I don’t get stage fright and forget those parts of my speech. I need to also verbally site better. I need to say all of the sources that I put on the PowerPoint to improve my creditability. This can be done by highlight the verbal citations on my notecards. Lastly, I need to say a more effective preview to my speech. To do this I need to summarize better what my speech is going to be about. Overall, I think I am becoming much more calm about giving speeches and becoming a better public speaker.
Per the class's feedback, the problem with my speech was not in its delivery: that, they said, was spot on. My problem was in assuming that everybody had the same background, the same working knowledge of the subject that I did.
I have taken several classes related to mass media—makes sense, as a Communication Studies major on the Radio/TV/Film track. I've taken several classes related to the histories of communication, especially broadcast communication—and it was very easy for me to draw parallels between network Radio and Television and the Internet. However, I jumped directly into subject matter that wasn't found online—it was subject matter that was imparted to us in classes, classes that the rest of my audience may or may not have taken.
I knew I knew my stuff, and the class knew I knew my stuff, but I could have done better at bringing it into their frame of reference—something that I will do in preparing future speeches.
When preparing my second speech, I was actually more daunted than I was while preparing my first one. Once I collected all the information I thought I needed to make my argument reliable, I was overwhelmed by all of the names, titles, and journals I’d have to present. However, I felt prepared to present on the first day and it went better than I had expected.
As far as the persuasive outline, I thought I did pretty well. I gathered lots of statistical information as well as personal stories to back up what I was saying. Furthermore, I tailored the information to my audience so that they would identify with what I was saying. This would make it as persuasive as possible to the audience of mostly young women. I followed Monroe’s Motivated Sequence as well, so that my argument was logical. The only thing that I probably would have changed would have been my second step’s plan, as it was too much like my action step of using spray tans as opposed to tanning beds. Changing the plan and evidence would have made my argument a little bit stronger.
In my next speech, I will be sure to make my persuasive speech follow Monroe’s Motivated Sequence perfectly so my argument has no holes and is as persuasive as possible.
I felt that my speech this time around was considerably more successful than the first speech that I presented, primarily because I seemed to be able to keep a conversational style while still outlining the key points that I had collected. I did a much better job of moving from point to point as well without inserting filler words or using needless hand gestures. This made for a much more focused speech, and one that allowed me to demonstrate a working knowledge of the subject I was speaking about. One of the other successes that I noticed during the speech was that I did not have as much of a problem with transitions as I did the first time around, and I think this certainly had to do with the more conversational style that I was able to bring to the speech.
However, I can still improve on a number of areas. Specifically, I could have adapted a bit more to my audience. When I was constructing the speech I felt that I needed to make an effort to include everyone because many of the sources I had used were geared toward specific majors and not leaving anyone out, but in doing so I overlooked gearing the speech directly toward TCNJ students, so I could have adapted to the audience a bit more. To correct this problem I just need to focus more in the outlining portion of the speech. I should have also made the visual aide a more crucial part of my presentation, because it did convey the information that I wanted it to convey but it did not come across as visually interesting and was easy to ignore. In the future I will make sure to take more time to find some sort of picture that ties in to break up the monotony. One other improvement I need to make is in the way that I integrate citations in to my speech. I know I did much better this time around than I did in the first speech, but I still feel that a lot of them came across as jarring and choppy rather than fluid. This simply comes down to more practice. All in all I was very pleased with how my persuasive speech went, and hope to make these improvements I outlined in the future.
Overall I think my choice of topic was relevant to the class instantly simply because it involved TCNJ and its students. This topic also was one that was very close to me as I have spent tireless hours in Student Government for this topic. I think that however also may have led to a partial flaw as I assumed that much of the audience was experienced with the topic when in fact they may have been missing some information. I think the PowerPoint helped the audience connect however because many of the visuals were of local campus scenes which they could relate to.
In terms of structure of the persuasive speech however I failed expand enough on the action step. I should have explicitly stated how students and audience members can contact the Student Government instead of just saying to contact them. This unfortunately left my persuasive speech with much to be desired. Additionally, in my speech I feel that the delivery may have been slightly rushed. However this is also my fault for wanting to volunteer to be the last speaker on the first day and putting that pressure on myself. I have realized however that I need to focus more on the structure of my outline instead of speaking extemporaneously, like most public speaking incidents in life. However as a speaker I still feel I was able to connect with my audience just due to the topic alone, and my comfort in front of the class. As we continue on to speeches that provide more extemporaneous speaking, I will make sure to still collect my thoughts, organize them, and then speak.
After giving my first speech I have come to notice several things I excell at and a few things that I really need to work on. For example, I believe that I was rather successful in my eye contact, pace of my speech, and with portraying my interest and love of the subject.
However, those should be second nature, and I also noticed that I need to work on some vital parts of my speechmaking. The first is within my crediblity. While I had my sources written down on notecards for some reason they got all discombobulated. To make sure that this doesnt happen again I really need to have more valuable information on my powerpoint. My powerpoint in this speech failed to offer many of my quotes. Just in case I do get confused, having the powerpoint to back me up could help me in maintaining my crediblity.
Another area that needs some work is within the flow and subject of my speech. I chose an area that was way too vast to discuss over a 5 minute speech. I need to edit more information out so that my speech is much more fluid and easy to understand. By doing so, my listeners will be more apt to attaining my information.
In addition to the crediblity and subject matter, I really need to practice a whole lot more. The kinks that I found after giving the speech could have been edited out earlier if I had run through the speech a few more times, or if I decided to test it out with a few friends. By practicing I could have also been more aquaited with my sources and my transitions would have been clearer which would have aided my earlier problems.
When giving my speech I was comfortable speaking in front of the class, I believe, because I watched how well all of my classmates connected to the audience. I chose a topic that I felt very strongly about and was glad to know that was conveyed to my audience. My information could have been better arranged and I need to work on making sure that I follow with my outline. I believed I used moving stories that kept the audiences' interest and presented them with real life statistics that impact a lot of teenagers today. When I asked the class everyone raised their hand that they owned a cell phone and nearly everyone raised their hand admitting that they were guilty of using their cell phones while driving. I believe that even more so than any of the information presented emphasized how important it is to be aware of the harms of "distracted driving". Over all I believe my speech went well and I was glad to have the feedback of the class and professor to build from in my future speeches.
One improvement that I can make is making sure that my visual aids, my outline, and actual speech are all cohesive and I use them to enhance one another instead of standing on their own.
After giving my second speech, I found a few things that I thought I improved upon, and a few things I felt I lacked. I loved my topic and was very passionate about it, which I believed helped me come up with a good argument. I think that I also had a relate-able argument, because I "brought it back" to the audience consistently. I attempted to achieve this by preparing my argument from the audience's perspective, and finding information that related to them and would be pertinent in their minds.
To create a stronger argument, I would have discussed my call to action further. Additionally, I would have attempted to take the colloquialisms out of my presentation, which I had inserted more frequently than in my first speech.
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