Kylie Escobales

 

Reflection Blog Post #1

Public speaking is the act of giving speeches on a certain topic or topics to a live audience and can be performed online or in person. Our speech class went over many different factors that go into giving a speech.  

Group 1 spoke to us first about public speaking. Speakers will often try to adapt to their audience in order to connect with them. So they might switch to a more conversational style, try and involve the audience, or use different forms of technology. With technology on the rise, it's more popular to be able to give speeches online and deliver to a wider audience.  

Some foundations of public speaking rely on Aristotle’s ideas of public speaking. He emphasizes the use of logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos is using logic to make your point. Pathos is appealing to people’s emotions to better connect with your audience. Ethos is when you build trust so your audience sees you as a more reliable figure and listens to you more. There are 5 different parts of public speaking and thp;9ose are invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Invention is coming up with good ideas and topics for you speech. Arrangement is how you structure and build your speech. Style is how make your speech interesting to an audience by using techniques such as language and story-telling to capture your audience’s attention. Memory is knowing your speech well enough to be able to deliver it confidently without relying too heavily on your notes. Delivery is how you present your speech.

Before your speech it’s important that you are relaxed. Breathing exercises can help you calm down and relax before you deliver a speech.4-7-8 breathing exercises is helpful for speech anxiety. Being able to turn your negative phrases into positive ones can also help you increase your confidence. Starting early and organizing your speech ahead of time can help reduce feeling anxious. Other things that can help would be researching the topic and your audience well to be able to figure out the best way to connect with them. If you are nervous while giving a speech its best to not show it. Try focusing on the audience rather than yourself and avoid commenting on the fact that you are nervous. After your speech it’s important to listen to any feedback that your audience might have. And after its good to reflect and see what you can do better for future speeches.  

It is also important for the audience to listen to our speaker properly. Things such as hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding. These are all the components of listening. Our goals when we listen to our speaker is to have empathy, and appreciation. We are listening for content and evaluation. There are some flaws when we listen to a speaker. Audiences can have listening filters. These are caused by cultural norms, values, experiences, biases, external noise, pseudolistening, beliefs, attitude, interests, mindlessness, and internal noise. While listening to a speaker we need to establish mindful listening, block distractions, and manage listening anxiety.

The general purpose of giving a speech is to engage, evaluate, and to be informative. Before you write your speech it’s good to generate ideas, write down your ideas, and be creative. You must be knowledgeable on your topic to be able to engage your audience. You need to also consider your time and resources. The outline of a speech should be general purpose, topic, then the specific purpose. When preparing to do research on your topic write a list of words related to your topic. Next, identify how you learned about the topic. You also need to keep track of what sources you use. Some good research materials can be either internet resources or library resources. Things like metasearch engine, search engine, specialized metasearch, and web directory are all examples of internet resources. Books, journals, magazines, newspapers, government publications, and reference materials are all examples of library resources. Some supporting details you can use in your speech to sound more trusting are narratives, examples, definitions, facts, statistics, and testimonies.  

Audiences pay attention more to the beginning of your speech rather than the middle of it. Primacy effect is very important when starting your speech. It’s all about making a good first impression. You only have one chance to wow your audience. Using things like attention getters can help keep your audience engaged in what you are saying. Using interesting facts, questions, and short videos can help. Make sure you are giving out correct information and be a credible speaker. When you are ending your speech its good to go back and go over the main points that you presented.  

    Languages are universal and crutial to how we communicate. Everyone has their own personal way of expressing themselves with language. Language is very ambiguous because many words have different meanings. Culture can also play a big role in this. Gender can also play a role. This is why it is important to choose your words carefully when giving a speech and make sure that you are being inclusive. This promotes equity. 

    There are distinctive characteristics of competent informative speaking. There is meaningful, accurate, clear, and limited. Then, there are diverse types of informative speeches. These types are objects, processes, and concepts.  

    Persuasion speaking is when we are trying to influence someone's thoughts, beliefs, or actions. When giving a persuasive speech you need to have strong ethical principles. This helps you sound accurate and truthful. Using claims can help make our speeches stronger. There are conclusion claims and premise claims. Reasoning can also be used to connect the bridge between claim and evidence. There is deductive, inductive, casual, and analogical reasoning. Fallacies are errors made in an argument.  

Special occasion speeches are important and it's all about being confident. Different special occasion speeches can be introductions, nominations, acceptance awards, tributes, toasts, after dinner, public testimony, and the elevator speech. Several types of group presentations are called, symposium, team report, panel discussion, round table discussion and forums.