What concept or concepts from the class do you thing were the most helpful in preparing your speeches?

The organization patterns were very helpful to me since I have a hard time especially with something like public speaking where I don’t speak in front of large groups very often and I’m just unorganized. It taught me how to organize my speeches depending on the effect I would want it to have. It showed me that speeches are very different from regular conversation where you just talk back and forth, but in a speech you have to get from A to B. So, yeah the organizational patterns were probably the most helpful but I also think that practicing your speech was very important also. I have asthma so a lot of times I wouldn’t want to stress out my throat by saying my speech out loud but just by looking over the power point and outline and thinking about what you were going to say when you got to this point and stuff helped a lot with visual cues when I gave my speech in front of class and actually made me remember things that I forgot during the speech.

What am I going to take from this class?

I am going to be more grateful for my teachers and respect them more. I mean there is so much work that goes into preparing for a five minute speech when they have to organize what they’re going to talk about for three to five hours. I am going to be a lot more understanding when they say they’re not done grading yet since there is so much on their plates.  I also think that time management and knowing how being in front of my audience affects my speech. I learned that you have to be in a good mindset and you can’t have things in or out of class distract you from what you’re doing. You have to build a whole new character when you get in front of the audience and let the past go. I think that’s what I had most trouble with and I think the beginning of the speech is a lot more easier than the ending.

My Favorite Speech

All the speeches were pretty good and I’m not just saying that because they all taught me something that I never knew about. But there was one that stood out and just seemed to flow very well and had a very extemporaneous speaking style. So I choose Scotts presentation on the Electoral College. For the most part it didn’t even seem like he was giving a speech and he was very relaxed. He was acting like himself and he looked very comfortable with it. He also gave us really good ways to take action and I thought that made his speech seem very achievable and just help it all wrap up. I really wonder if he took a long time to practice the speech or if it just comes natural because all his speeches were pretty good. Another factor could be that he just had more time to grow knowledge about these subjects but I’m pretty sure it’s because he is just really good at speeches.