Chapter 5: Useful or Interesting

In this chapter, the subject of time was interesting to me. I never thought that the hours have that much of an affect of the audience. It's interesting to point out that the audience would be more influenced at a certain time of the day. When a person is hungry, I guess that does distract them from hearing a speech. I just thought about when I had to listen to speeches and or presentations. I had an English class in the morning and there was definitely no time for me to eat then. Plus, the class was at 7:30AM. It was way too early for me already, and I didn't even have time in the morning to eat. The hunger did distract me here and there; although when a person said something interesting or brought out an important fact I payed attention to that. It's just everything else kinda just went into my ear and flew out of the other [not to sound rude at all, but I'm proving that the timing does affect a person!]. I don't have that food coma after I eat a meal usually. But I found this to be a interesting fact, because we are meeting up at around noon, and that's definitely during lunch time. I'm sure people are going to eat before they head out to meet for our class. So the subject upon time caught my attention. I just never thought about how time can be an "important" factor, but after reading this I found it to make more sense.

Audience Analysis and Audience Adaptation

As for chapter 5, adapting and analyzing an audience requires similar tasks. In order to be confident in your speech, the book suggested that the speaker should gather information about their audience. I think that gathering demographic data and psychographic data are equally as important when a speaker is wanting to successfully adapt to their audience. Knowing the audiences age limits an ethnicity are the two important information in my opinion. With knowing the age limit, the speaker has knowledge of what kinds of subject he/she should mention in the speech. Also, the speaker would be aware of how easy or difficult they should make the speech in order for the message to come across. As for demographic data I believe that knowing the vast majority views and beliefs are important when giving a speech. This can also tie in with the location that the speaker is giving their speech at. For an example, a public speaker cannot just go to a church and present a speech about questioning the believers of God. Therefore depending on the location and depending on the demographic data, the speaker should definitely want to gather that information prior to presenting his/her speech.
As for my speech, it's hard because we've all never seen each other before. I don't exactly have your guys' opinions on certain subjects nor do I hear people talking about different subjects before class starting. Maybe at the first meeting we have, when people start to give their presentations I can try to pay attention to certain things that they talk about in their speech. Since they are talking about subjects that mainly interests them, by listening to the speech, I can get a feel of what each person may like and what not. Then from there, I can try to incorporate some of it in my speech if there are any relations at all to my topics.
The chapter also mentions about how the time of the day can also affect the audience. Since we're meeting at noon, I'm going to try to volunteer myself as one of the first few people to go, because I know that the audience can get super dull and doze off after the first couple of presenters! :[

Chapter 5: Drinking & Light Pollution

I viewed the drinking video first. This video had Matthew presenting his persuasive speech about drinking, and the harmful affect of drinking and driving. From this video, I think that Matthew did not have as much eye contact, and his voice is slightly dull in a way. Not to criticized harshly, but it's that kind of presentations that makes the audience shift away. What's very interesting about this presentation is all of his statistics and facts about irresponsible drinking. He gives percentage and also specific statistics during his speech. I believe that giving statistics such as "1 out of 3 of you..." are very helpful for the audience to really grasp that fact. Matthew did not just verbally giving statistics, but also provided the facts on the overhead as a mean of media for the audience. The light pollution video was super short in comparison to Matthew's speech. From Courtney's speech I could already tell that did a lot of research, because her persuasive speech contained many parts. Her voice and the way she started off her speech was very lively. In addition, she kept changing her tone here and there which made it interesting to listen, and not too boring. She used hand movements and also had eye contact. She also incorporated transition words such as finally. I liked how she presented what she was going to be explaining during her essay. From both of these videos, I've learned that speaking monotonously is definitely a bore to the class. On the other hand using hand gestures and using slide shows or providing some kind of physical object can keep the audience's attention. That is what I plan on doing in my speech.

Chp 6. Speech Buddy Videos

The video with Evan talked about how to do research on your essay topic. What I found interesting from the reading and from this video is to incorporate both sides of the topic; such as taking a person who is anti-abortion and a person who is pro-abortion. As a expert on this topic, I must take in both views and conduct a speech presenting those two opinions even if I was an anti-abortionist. As for previous speeches and research papers that I have written, I always found myself limiting to just Google and Yahoo! search. I did not go abroad and search on different search engines as much. I have used the Academic Search Premiere at our school's library. You can also access that at home. This site was super useful, because all of the results were fully reliable. And also, as for the citing, the site does the citing for you! Cool right? :]
As for the other video titled: Gastropods, Shaura started out telling her audience her dream. Then tying it down to what she wanted to talk about, slugs. I liked how she started out with a clever introduction to grab the audience's attention. Some of the speeches that I've done, it was usually hard to come up with a clever grabber. I should try with my 3 upcoming speeches though. Also, using the power point is another digital media that I'm going to be using for, at least, two of my speeches.

Chp 6. Useful & Interesting

In this chapter, I found the list of search engines very useful actually. Sad to say, even after all of these research papers that I have done, I rarely find myself using anything else but Google and Yahoo! search. For some reason, those two are the only ones that come to mind when I need to search for something.
Also I found the metasearch engines to be very interesting. Not only does it provide you with links to your search, but it also combines other websites from other search engines. I thought that that was pretty neat. Since I solely focus on two engines, I will be sure to use metasearch for my papers. Just so I can get more related links instead of only relying on two search engines for most of my resources.
I also noticed that whenever I have an assignment that requires me to think of my own subject, I usually come up with something that I've experiences before. I don't get too creative with my ideas until I sit there and brainstorm ideas that are familiar to me. Then I begin to jot down other possible ideas and think of how it could relate to the speech assignments.

Conducting Research Interviews

As far as interviews go, I have never interviewed anyone "famous" or well known by a lot of people. I've only interview certain teachers at my school and a few students. While conducting a research interview, similar to what the book mentioned, having a few questions at hand is very important. In my opinion, if someone has agreed to giving you their time and day for an interview, it's only best to have your questions and what not organized and ready. If you're coming up with questions off the bat during the interview, the interviewee would not seem to happy about it, because obviously you're not ready and pretty much wasting more time.
This was pretty much all I did when I had to interview people. I didn't use a recorder to record what they had to say. I listened attentively and jotted down a few notes. But don't write down everything that they are saying. I think that would just make the interviewee more nervous because now they're monitoring more of what they're saying.
Overall, having my questions at hand was what helped the interview to go by smoothly. Also from listening to their responses, more questions can arise from that. So I learned not to go over board with so many questions. Also, choosing people is the most important, because they are the ones that are going to supply you with the answers. You don't want to go through an interview and not get any major important information out of it.
As for improvement, I always see room for more improvement throughout everything. Even though I may not notice any flaws at the moment that I am interviewing people, sometimes if I get any feedback I would incorporate that into my next interviewing session.

What I found useful in chapter 2 and chapter 4.

I will admit that this public speaking book seemed like a typical book that told us what we already know. It will just go into more depths on each subject. But as I sat down to read it, it can actually relate to me a lot. I'm sure it relates to every person who has to do public speaking, but it's amazing how it can get all of the emotions and what not just right.
Chapter 2 described about the whole process of how to calm yourself down before and during your speech. The breathing exercises came back up again. Those are probably helpful, but I can't picture myself pausing for so long up there in front of the audience. Dressing appropriately would build your confidence and I agree with that completely. It brings the whole vibe together that way. It also mentions for the speakers to "make no apologies or excuses". Even though people shouldn't do this, I still hear people making such excuses as "Well I misplaced my memory stick, so now I can't show you guys the slides I made." and so on. I won't say that I have never made an excuse or some apology, but I didn't think this was any big deal. But that's another thing that I learned from reading this chapter so I shall be leaving out the lame excuses, if any. :]

As for choosing topics for a speech discussed about in chapter 4, this process is somewhat hard for me, because even though there are plenty of topics to choose from, I want to choose something that interests me and also interests others. I don't want to choose an ordinary topic and bore the audience. I want them to instantly think "Oh hey wow, why didn't I think of a topic like that". So I spend a lot of time brainstorming and thinking about what topics to really talk about that would grasp the audeince's attention throughout my whole speech. The chapter also mentions about writing the thesis down. I think this is important, because from what you have to say [your main points] you're going to make sure that it can still lead back to your main topic.

Video: 2.1, 2.2 & Intro Jessica.

From watching the video 2.1, I learned that there were breathing techniques to manage your anxiety. Janine talked about prior to giving a speech, the speaker should prepare by imagining how the speech will go and try to only focus on the good things. Relabeling emotions is something that I can relate to. When I get nervous I begin to struggle with my words. I start to notice that I’m getting tongue tied, so I pause and smile. If I have notes, I’ll look down at it really quick to get my concentration back. Once I have my thoughts together again, I begin to start again where I had left off.


From the video 2.2, Anthony suggests that every speaker should go to the physical location to get used to the setting. What’s helpful about this video is what Janine had presented. Speakers should really look up useful information about their topic and be ready to answer questions from the audience. Knowing how the professors will grade the speech is also very important, because it will help the speaker to know what to talk about and score all full points on the grading criteria.

The last video of Jenny speaking, I noticed that she had a lot of energy. It then reminded me that I should try to also have confidence in myself and present my speech with as much enthusiasm. She combined two unlikely subjects, but made a very smooth transition. Her technique was very well acted out and as an audience; I could tell that she had practiced many times. Jenny was using hand gestures and she also had eye contact. Hand gestures are important in my opinion, because it puts on a show for the audience. If a speaker just stood there with both of their hands to the side and spoke to the class, it wouldn’t be very entertaining. Eye contact is important, because it gives the audience a sense of connection. When I’m in the audience, listening and watching a speaker, I feel more engaged when they are staring out to their audience. When a speaker is just focusing their eyes on the note card or on the floor it distracts me because I have no one to look at, then I find myself looking around the classroom instead.

1. What makes you apprehensive about public speaking?

Public speaking is pretty much a self explanatory class. Public speaking is a class that helps you develop your speaking skills in general. What I have always apprehended about public speaking is how others view me. The only thing I’m uneasy about is how my audience would react to my speeches. I’ve always question if they would understand what my point is, and if they would enjoy my whole speech overall. Having the thought of standing up there and just speaking, without making any sense or having my thoughts organized enough, is what makes me concerned. Usually when I have a speech coming up, I would organize it into an outline, make sure I have my main points down, and practice my speech enough until I remember those main ideas that I will be discussing. When I get up to speak though, I have this tendency to speak fast in order to get my speech over with. Once I’m up there delivering my speech, I’m still a bit nervous, because I know that all eyes are on me. Everyone’s watching my every move and listening to every word- or at least I hope so. Because of that bad habit, I sometimes leave some points out that would have boosted my speech just a little bit more. Overall my thoughts about how the audience will judge me are what I’m apprehensive about, because it also ties in with my speech performance. Considering how this is an online course, we have never met each other at all. To know that we are going to meet up at the end of this month, and give a speech is something that I am slightly nervous about. The chapter talks about the process of habituation. I re-read this paragraph twice, because it stood out to me as to be very true. People do have to get used to the environment and the people around in order to feel more comfortable. I’m the same way, once I am comfortable with some people and I know how the classroom is facilitated, I can act more without hesitation. I won’t have to question everything that I do, because by being used to the rules of the class I am able to participate freely. Also, the book mentions about how presentation media is very helpful nowadays. The choice of using PowerPoint or to use any physical object helps me to calm down, because people are also focusing on the object and not just centering their eyes all on me.