When I heard about having a speaker in my communication 315 class, I was more than excited. We were told that a LGBTQ member was going to be coming into the classroom to talk to us about her experience during her transition. I always get very intrigued hearing about other people’s life stories. Whether it’s a new friend talking to me about their life or an old one, I am always interested when hearing about people’s past. When this speech started, I was unexpectedly unimpressed. There were three very noticeable top three weaknesses within this speech. Since I love hearing people’s stories, I was sure I was going to love hearing about her transition. The first weakness within her speech was, when we walked into the classroom, she was sitting …show more content…
Sadly, I was wrong. My class is a rather large class so this rendered her voice projection. I sit in the very back and I could barely hear what she was saying. Not only was this a cause of her voice projection being low but she had a quieter voice in general, causing this to be another smaller weakness, but not one of my top. Also, it’s nice to see people when they talk. Another weakness I noticed was this presenter said, “Um,” in almost every sentence. Sometimes she would use it twice. This was distracting. I almost couldn’t pay attention to what she was saying because of this word being used so many times. The last weakness this presenter had was using grammar not many people could understand. She warned us in the beginning that we could write down the words we were unsure of and ask her about them once the speech was over. …show more content…
One of her strengths within her speech was her passion. When she was telling about her dad’s reaction to her speech, I could really tell by her voice how much that curtail moment with her dad really meant to her. She is very good at the story telling aspect of speaking and letting everyone feel her emotion. The next strength I noticed in her speech was her eye contact. Even though she was sitting down so she really didn’t get to the people in the back of the classroom, she kept great eye contact with the people in the front of the room. I believe if I was sitting in the front of the room or if she would have been standing up, I would have been able to connect with her just that more with her eye contact. The last strength I noticed was doing a great job at using details within her speech to let everyone imagine what she looked like before her transition. She was speaking about her hair being an important aspect to her transition. Rather than only telling us her hair was important to her, she told us to imagine her with a certain length, color, texture of hair. This helped us really be able to tell what she was going through and all the pain that came with
Her slow yet concise way of speaking, coupled with easy to follow transitions allowed for a speech that was enjoyable to listen to. Her use of examples from her personal life allowed her audience to get a picture of who she was if they did not know, and allowed her to better relate to them by provided examples of how she is related to the college they are graduating from. Her reference to many modern political problems allowed her to bring up her important role as an activist and facilitated further understanding from the audience. While some areas of her speech were weak, such as the longer than needed pauses and her lack of consistent eye contact, to a few points where she didn’t speak clearly enough, the overall picture that was her speech was fairly strong. Looking at this speech, I hope to incorporate some aspects that I failed to include in my previous speeches. Some of these include her use of hand gestures to emphasize and exaggerate certain phrases and topics, and her combined use of appeals. While my initial thoughts going in were “This is boring” and “This is too slow”, it evolved into me wanting to hear more, and overall my defeat in the beginning turned into a victory at the
I think she looked comfortable on stage because she stood with confidence and made a variety of hand gestures. She didn 't move around the stage very often but I don 't think that affected her delivery very much. Throughout the speech, she maintained good eye contact with the audience and this made it seem more interpersonal. In the Q & A session, she also maintained eye contact with the person questioning her.
Though I had some strong points in my informative speech, I still feel there was a lot I could improve upon. I could not recognize any vocalized pauses but I noticed that at certain points of speech where I would transition from one point to another, I would push my glasses up. I don’t remember if this was because my glasses were actually slipping down or because I was nervous. Also, after watching my video, I found that in the beginning of the speech I was swaying a lot, but because I was standing behind the table it wasn’t that noticeable. The one major thing I would change is my choice to stand behind the table. It was something I did unconsciously and out of habit of usually speaking behind a podium, and I did not notice I did it until
Public speaking is a topic that most people dread. The anxious feeling of getting in front of people and presenting is avoided by many people at all costs. Although public speaking has a bad reputation, when done right, it can be a very valuable skill to have. Recently, I attended a presentation that was given by Ann Walker, a member of the National Alliance for Mental Health (NAMI). This presentation was focused on making more people aware about mental illnesses and the effects of them, which was using the method of an Informative Speech. As said in it’s name, the purpose of this kind of presentation is to “Increase your audience’s knowledge of a particular topic or teach them something new” (Hosek & Crawford, 2016, p. 74), which is stated in our student guidebook. It was held in a very casual setting, consisting of a college classroom holding about 50 seats. Before Walker started presenting her speech, she asked the audience what most of us were majoring in.
I chose the topic of transgenderism. Transgender is when an individual tries to switch genders. Transgender comes from the Latin words trans, meaning “across.” Transgender literally means “across gender.” Many trans-individuals decided later on in their lives that they want to switch genders, and other people argue that they were born the wrong gender. Trans-people experience many difficulties throughout their lives. Switching genders makes their lives more challenging, because of many reasons. Their lives are more challenging because of their religion, whether or not they are accepted. The military is very strict, and will not accept trans individuals whatsoever. Insurance companies sometimes will not accept them as well. Trans people are not always accepted by certain occupations. Growing up in schools, trans people are all treated differently regarding to which bathroom/locker room to use. There is a huge debate whether or not trans students are even allowed to participate on sports teams, and if they are, which team to be on. Other obstacles such as birth certificates, passports, and driver’s licenses are all major issues as well. Trans people have to decide if they are willing to come forward, and say ‘This is who I am.’ But before trans-people can come out to other, they must come out to
There are certainly various points in history that can be construed as trailblazing for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. One event in particular, however, sparked awareness and a call to action that previously could never have been conceptualized in the United States. This unforgettable incident, the Stonewall riots of 1969, altered the public’s view of the gay community and arguably jumpstarted the next revolution in an entirely new civil rights movement.
After learning and reviewing the action continuum chart in this class it brought a specific quote to my mind, “if you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem,” while I was aware of other forms of oppression, I only really involved myself with topics and intervention tactics that dealt with racism and sexism, as these were the two areas directly affecting me and my life. One of the topics in this course that stood out to me was the discussion on transgender oppression, before coming to college, information about the transgender community and even sectors of the LGBTQ community was somewhat taboo to me..
A: Once upon a time, I had to read some announcements for my school. This was my worst public speaking. I was afraid. It was my first time reading the school announcements on the PA system. I made so many mistakes my teachers thought I was illiterate. I read some of the words wrong. I learn to alway read through whatever your reading in front of people.
We, as human beings, should be involved in the idea of supporting rights and equality for transgenders because they are one of us no matter what they believe. It definitely matters to the audience to aware of since discrimination against transgender is still a susceptible issue, not only defense against gender minorities, but also against human rights generally. If we do not start correcting this problem, our family members or children may experience the unavoidable consequences of it themselves in the future. We need to fight to protect the rights and safety of transgender nonconforming students to be treated with respect at school as well as their parents.
He would maintain eye contact with the audience at times but mainly look at his PowerPoint or note cards for most of the time. The speaker would fidget, and constantly look down at his notes making him look not confident. His confidence level seem to be average at times, but slight above average when speaking on certain key points. The speaker does show enthusiasm on his topic about the effects of birth order. It looks like he can relate to the topic and does know a lot of information on it. The volume of the speech was just right and the speed is at a good pace making him easy to understand. The PowerPoint he had was an effective presentation aid he used. He kept referring information from it, and gave the audience visual
Overall, Amy Cuddy gave an effective speech on her topic of the importance of body language. Amy Cuddy achieve the goal of an effective speech by her delivery of the topic, her credibility on the subject, and how she kept the audience engage. In order for a person to give an effect speech they should really look into on how Amy Cuddy gave her
Persuasive speeches can be difficult to change an audience’s opinion, especially cliché topics such as abortion or who’s best basketball player in history. Persuasive speeches covering a general subject that has been studied extensively, for instance texting and driving, typically have less opposition. However, all persuasive speeches require sourcing the information used and checking facts to insure it is correct. The speaker used two methods to win-over the audience which was statistics, and storytelling. This speaker did good job on his speech and confirmed my values of don’t text and drive.
Unfortunately, when it came to my persuasive speech in the speaking to everyone part it was a disaster for me. I had known what I was going to say, have my confidence very high, and my energy level was high. Sadly, I lost my track and fell off, was not sure where to start again, and pause for a very long time. To me it was embarrassing, but it was a lesson learn. My lesson was that I must stay calm and think positive
Some strengths that I use while giving a speech are the use of different pitches, the use of different volumes, the use of different facial expressions, and good posture. Some weaknesses that I have while giving a speech are the use of vocal fillers, the too fast of a rate at which I speak, the lack of eye contact, and the nervous movement from my body. I know that I have a lot to improve on when it comes time to get up and speak in front of others. However, I do feel that only after three speeches in my public speaking class, I have grown and become a better public speaker. Each speech that I have done, have gradually gotten better, but I do believe my dramatic reading speech was my
According to a 2001 Gallup poll, “more than 40% of Americans fear public speaking than death”, I was shocked to learn this statistics that I was not the only one. As I was pondering about what to write on my essay for my favorite school, I thought about my own childhood experience.