Sea of Persuasion

Every day I am in a sea of persuasion. Everywhere that I look there are always TV commercials telling me to buy something. Or when I'm walking out of SJSU, heading down the street to catch the light rail, there are tons of stores and signs that either persuades me to buy some shoes or to switch to Geiko! There are so much persuasion going on, but you just need to be asked the question for you to realize the persuasions around you. Even when I am having conversations with my friends, they are trying to get me to do buy something or to go somewhere or even to do something. I view that the media has an impact on persuading people. But usually it seems to come naturally. For example, the weatherman! They can simply give you a temperature and tell you that it's going to rain. People will automatically know to carry their umbrellas the next day. As for public speaking, I can think of school events that try to get us to either join a club, or to not smoke and what not. I was in a program which went around persuading people too. We did skits of real life scenarios to teach Junior High students how to say no to drugs and pure pressure.
As your own being and caring for what's good for you is how you can more of a critical consumer. Obviously, there will always be something that you don't favor so you would go against it.

Actuative Speech

As for my speech I am going to be persuade my audience to learn and to keep their native language. For my first main point I am planning to explain the problem with young adults, and them not understanding their language fluently enough. In my second main point I am going to explain about the benefits of keeping your native language, and what it can provide in your life along the way. Finally in my third main point, I'm going to suggest 3 reasonable actions my audience can take to learn more of their native language.
For my introduction, I'm going to start off with a question as a grabber. Afterward I am going to give a few facts and statistics on how many people in the Unites States speak English. These fact will be through a credibility. For my conclusion I am going to try to persuade my audience to consider one of the suggestions that I offered. Then I will review my main speeches again and close it up with strong ending. For the ending I hope to get my audience to at least think about how much they know their language, and hopefully try to learn more.
To persuade my audience, I'm going to give a few narratives that tie in with my topic. Because I know almost all of my audience can relate to this topic, I'm going to emphasis my 3 suggestions very clearly and strongly.

Interesting Concept

One concept that I found interesting in these readings was in chapter 13. I found it convenient, because it broke down the different patterns to organized the informative speeches. I used this chapter to help me a lot with the prior speech, so I was really familiar with this chapter and its content. Not only did they provide specific examples for each one, but the chapter also gave tips on how to make it more interesting depending on which style pattern you use. This chapter basically broke down the steps to forming a well organized informative essay. It obviously helped me a lot, because I did well on both my outline and my speech.

Sexist language

The discussion of Fickr captured my interesting very much. I didn't think anyone would feel indifferent about the use of the word "girl" to describe a women. I don't feel degraded or offended with people labeling me or any other female a girl. It's nice to be called a woman or lady, but being labeled as a "girl" in tags are just about the same. I don't view the word "girl" as to be a sexist term. There are a lot of words that label things and people (gender) that are closely related to "girl". Such examples were given by Rippie: Contra Censura:

"i suppose one solution is to ban words like girl, boy, black, white, red, yellow, etc...
asian should go, and indian is probably a hot-button, too."

I've never came across this kind if topic before. I can imagine labeling some religion or nationality something other than the original can be demeaning, but something as simple as boy, girl, yellow, red is natural. In the text book, it claimed that certain words and sentences can be viewed differently to the opposite sex. I see it all the same. I don't mind the gender use at all.

Interactive Videos 10.1, 10.2, 12.1, 12.2 and 12.3

A concept that I learned from these video 12.1 was the use of your voice. Volume can be a very effective way to get your audience's attention. Luckily, from the comments that I receive from my presentations, most people have mention that I do have a clear and loud voice. Another concept I've learn was how to control your tone. Speaking too lively and quickly can easily distract the audience. They won't really pay attention to the content of your speech, but they would be distracted by the way you are talking. Speaking calmly, yet no with a monotone, at a decent pace is the most effective way to capture your audience's attention to maintain that attention through out the presentation.
In video 12.2 I gained more knowledge about how presenters should maintain their postures and their appearance. The video also taught about eye contact and your body movement. These tips do help because again, these are the main points to delivering a good speech. You want the audience to focus on what you have to say rather than to focus on your appearance only.

From tte videos, what I plan on applying to my third speech is body gestures. For me though, it's the hand gestures in general. Some of the audience noted that I have hand gestures. I think that might be distracting some people a little.

Useful or Interesting in Chp 11.

In this chapter I learned a lot overall about presentation media. I learned more about my choice of presentation, which is the use of the Power Point. I was glad to see that for most of the tips given for using Power Point was what I was already doing. If I had to pick another way of presenting , I would choose the overhead transparency. I choose this type of media, because it's almost very similar to the Power Point. The only difference I see with the transparency is that I have the ability to write on it as I am giving the presentation. Even though as a negative, the speaker would most likely bow their head down to face the transparency, equally it is like facing the Power Point. Although with control and practice, a speaker can present while using the overhead transparency very professionally. As I read through the chapter, the guidelines for using an overhead transparency is very similar to the Power Point as I have already pointed out. I think this can also help to engage the audience, because from drawing and writing availability for the speaker, the speaker can draw more attention by asking questions and or conducting an activity of the transparency.

Presenting in front of 5 people

As for the presentation, I decided to present my speech in front my close friends. Their names were Jessica, Rushkin, Angelo, Avin, and Patty. I decide to present in front of them, because they have been through giving speeches also. I thought that maybe they could give me advice and tips that I've never received before from previous teachers and colleagues.

This time around I decided to keep my introduction, yet I added a second question to capture my audiences attention a little more. I asked my audience "Now that counterfeit has been rising, how many of you are checking the change that you get back?". I still gave my audience eye contact throughout my speech, as I did during the class presentation. Another different approach was the way I ended my conclusion. I tried to reorganize my thoughts more and continues on with what I left off in my introduction. I briefly summed up my main points again. Then I went back to the audience and reminded them to next time, wherever they may be, check the change that they receive even if the amount is correct. The bill can always be counterfeit.

From the comments that I had received, it seemed more like I improved with the content of my speech; although at some points I did stutter a little. I did get all of my main points across as I did with my speech on Friday. So as for my opinion, I did the same as I did on Friday, but the question and the the way I summed up my conclusion was a bit of an improvement. Another improvement that i accomplished was the hand gestures. I tried to keep my hands calm, but I did make small movements to make myself more interesting. I didn't want to look too boring up there.

If I had the chance to do the speech again for the third time, I wouldn't focus on changing anything much at all. I'd rather try to improve on what I already have, plus the mistakes that I made with the power point. With the power point, I talked towards the wall, instead of towards the audience. That was the only weakness that I saw that I had. Or at least, that was the main improvement that I needed to work on. So that would be the only one that I would try my best on.

The exercise was pretty useful. It's like having another chance to revise your speech. I felt a lot more comfortable though, because it was in front of people that I know very well. It helped me become aware of my content and also the delivery of my speech. At the time I was presenting, I could also picture myself standing in front of class on Friday presenting the speech. I was almost very sure of what I had said Friday, so I tried to repeat those words, but also added some new sentences/words to improve the speech a little.