another additional weblog entry
Have you ever watched the president give a speech? It always amazes me how well he does reciting a speech, and even though he is probably reading it off the teleprompter, he always gets the proper pathos into the speech to make us feel he really feels what he is talking, and Im sure he relies on his competence and character (ethos) to help get his points to us the audience. It is usually interesting to compare a rehearsed speech to an interview session, or some other situation where they don't have an opportunity to rehearse what thye're going to say. And sometines it get them into real trouble....
My experience with speech 111
At the beginning of this class, I was just about petrified to stand in front of a camera and think that someone was going to view my performance and critique it. It made me so nervous, I just had to put the camera out of my mind. During this last speech, I turned the viewing screen around so I could watch myself while doing the speech. Apparently, I was feeling much more comfortable with the camera. I think this class would be much more fun in the classroom, but in some ways more stressful also. I told my wife that those standing in front of the class only get one shot to present their speech, while we have unlimited tries due to the rewind button. It was to easy to get wrapped up in trying to do a perfect speech. I would still be very nervous standing in front of a crowd, but at least, I have the confidence now to write a speech that I could believe in.
another additional weblog post
An interesting thing I have noticed while watching tv, is that during the commercials, I find myself comparing what I have learned about persuasive speeches to the speakers on the commercials. They seem to repeat themselves frequently, which I did not do on my speech, and they talk quickly, which is in part due to the time constraints, and in part due to trying to convince us to -ACT NOW - before we come to our senses and change our mind. Also, whenever I listen to a speaker, such as a tv evangelist, I try to figure if his speech is informative style, of persuasive style. Perhaps, someday I will get over this, but for now it's interesting to commpare. I also wonder if anyone ever yells during their speech.
Nelson community play
This last Friday, I attended a presentation sponsored by the Nelson Community Club. Every spring this club does this as a fundraiser for their community projects. Generally, they have 2 skits/short plays that they present. The actors are members of the club. They also have a local band that performs, and some of our local singing talent also participate by singing some songs. I always marvel about how easy it seems for some of them to get up in front of a crowd and sing. I am sure it is much harder for some than others. One young lady that usually performs with the local band was singing a song that she wasn't totally familar with, and about halfway through, she forgot the words. If that would have been me, I would have been awfully embarrased, and probably ran off the stage, however, she just kind of laughed it off, stated that she "hates it when she forgets the words." Then she just waited until the band got to the chorus and she started singing ; she was really smooth about the transition; I thought it was neat how she managed to get through that mistake.
passive agreement speech type
I understand that a speech to gain passive agreement is designed to convince an audience that a given policy is acceptable without audience action taken in support of the policy. What I don't really understand is why a speaker would use this type of persuasive speech. I think the speaker would want to get the audience involved in his persuasion. It seems to me about all the speaker would accomplish is gaining self-affirmation, and perhaps present a forum for discussion, which would probably fall under the category of informative speech.
P and P of persuasive speech #2
My original idea for this assignment was to research and present the flip side of my helmet law speech, however, I decided to persuade everyone the importance of having a disaster plan, supplies, and knowing what disasters may present in our area. As I was researching, the virginia tech massacre took place. This immediately helped reinforce the importance of my speech ideas, especially communications, and awareness of surroundings. I must admit the ideas of speaking in front of a camera is not near as intimidating now as the first time was. Seems like we had about 20 tries on that first one, before we decided it was presentable. And to think, probably no one but the instructor ever viewed it. These last 2 speeches only required 3 tries for the first one and 1 try for the last one. I think this points out that the class was successful in getting us in front of the camera and feeling comfortable.
Ron Willis as a speaker
This speaker usually adds a good mix of humor to his seminars. This helps keep the subject interesting, however, I feel that he needs to do some research and add more outside sources to his "talks." Most of the examples that he uses concern either himself with previous workplace experiences, or him and his family relationships for examples. Depending on how interesting the subjects are, it almost seems at times as though his presentations are all about himself, and this causes me to loose interest in his subject very quickly. I have attended approximately 5 of his seminars and this last one "Recognizing your nature" was the most interesting one.
Ron Willis Motivational Seminar
I recently attended a seminar that was a mandatory requirement of my job. The speaker, Ron Willis, a motivational speaker from Kansas, comes one or two times a year to improve moral in our workplace. The title of this seminar was Recoginizing Your Nature, "It can be a Real Zoo around here." He developed a list of 60 personal attributes of people and catigorized them under names of four animals: lion, otter, beaver, golden retriever. We went through the columns of attributs and ranked them as they applied to our own persoality. Added them up, and that resulted in us being categorized as one of four animals. Obviously, the lion is the strongest willed, after next, beavers more into doing a job well, and golden retrievers more into relationships with people. This seminar was about three hours long. The purpose was to help identiy a category we fit into and consequently haw we interat with people in other categories. The seminar also showed how each categoring of people changed as stress was added to their jobs, and then when the stress of the job was at crisis level. The focus was to help realize the problems that develop and how we often deal with them and as a result how we could better deal with then without hurting our relationships with our co-workers.
Preparing Persuasive Speech #1
My speech was about maintaining Nebrask's current motorcycle helmet law. Since it has been approximately a year since I worked on the first 2 units of this speech class, I found it difficult to work through the citations. I found large amounts of information supporting the helmet laws that are in effect throughout the united States. Even common sense tells us that a helmeted motorcycle rider is safer than an unhelmeted one. Information concerning costs of healthcare of helmets verses unhelmeted riders involved in accidents was also plentiful. The biggest dilemma I experienced was my beeling of having the right to choose whether or not to wear a helmet versus that being mandated by law. However, I feel that peer pruessure would result in some riders going without helmets, if they had a choice; when they might otherwise be inclined to wear a helmet. I chose not to address this issue in my speech because I felt it would develop into a separate issue concerning rights to choose versus laws -- such as helmet use, seat belt use, cellphone use while driving etc.
