Journal 1
In chapter 1 of a pocket guide to public speaking it pretty much goes over the basics of how to write a speech and how to present it. One of the key points I took away from the chapter is communication. When public speaking there are many different types of groups that you could encounter. You have one on one, small group mass group, and public speaking. Since there are all these different types of groups you may want to change how you communicate based on what situation you are in. for example if you are doing a one on one conversation you would want to maintain eye contact with the other person and speak clearly so they can understand and follow what you are saying. Compare this with a public speaking event where there could be hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. You would want to speak loud and clear for everyone to hear you, and look at different places in the crowd to show that you’re into what you are saying and they can understand your speech fairly easily. Another key point is the oral style of speech you will use. For example if your in a debate speech you want to have a style that’s serious with facts to back you up and you’re passionate about what you are saying. Compare this with a personal speech where you may be more relaxed and throw a joke in here or there and maybe have a less serious tone.
Journal 2
Practice is crucial in order for you to be at your peak performance. This goes for anything from sports to taking exams. An experience I have is with baseball. Batting is very difficult to start with the ball moving at a high velocity it’s very hard to see. With batting practice you getting into the habit of seeing how fast the ball is moving, timing your swing, and making solid contact. Without batting practice you are very unprepared and will most likely strikeout in your at bat during the game. In a speech class you need to rehearse your line so you can execute your speech to the best of your ability. Speech rehearsals make sure that you know what your saying, how long your speech is, and also if you rehearse in front of people they can give you feedback on how you can improve as a speaker. Without practice you can find yourself pausing too much, fubling your words, or even talking too loud or quiet. Practice leads to success and without it it’s going to be very hard to succeed. It’s almost impossible to be perfect, and without practice there’s a high chance you will be far from it. Practice is what allows you to get pretty close or achieve perfection.
Journal 3
After doing the impromptu speech I felt pretty good for th e most part on delivering it. Some things that went well for we were that I think that I had pretty good eye contact and that I didn’t look down at my paper too much at all. I think that my posture was nice and I didn’t move around too much to distract from my speech. Somethings that I could improve on is that pacing myself better. I noticed that when I was practicing, I was in between the minute in a half to two minute mark but when I was giving my speech I was a lot faster than I anticipated. Also I could hear myself getting nervous and fumbling on my words, so more practice and getting used to giving speeches will help with that. Overall there are some good and bad that came out of the speech. I know this is only the first one, but I’m going to take the good and the bad to better myself as a speaker for the next speech that we will present.
Journal 4
Chapter 11 is about organizing the body of the speech. When reading this chapter, I took a lot away from it and how I can use the information to become a better speaker. The main thing that I took away was that when construction your body of your speech you want to use main points to make your claims. This show your ideas that you want to share and putting it in your body helps make it get across to your audience. Now when making key ideas you want to keep them limited. In the reading it shows that people can take in a range from 2-7 ideas. This means to not go too crazy when making the ideas and to just make sure you get your point across. You also want to make sure that it flows nicely, and you want to use good transition words that make your speech flow and not seem too choppy. In Chapter 12 it talks about how to organize your speech. In the chapter it gives you tons of different organization techniques and how they can be used in different speeches. The technique that I like the most in this chapter is the cause and effect pattern for me I always like to know the reason why someone is talking about a specific topic or certain cause. When they explain it to me and show the effects it makes it seem a lot clearer after hearing the reasoning behind why they are talking about the topic. Also, when giving your main points you want to make sure that they relate back to what you said in you thesis. Another technique I also like is the narrative pattern. This is because you are telling the speech like a story and it could be a nice organized way of getting you points across
Journal 5
Coming into today, I felt pretty good about my Speech. I had a solid outline going, and I have an idea on how I want to present it. Since I’m an upperclassmen my skill is how to study for exams. They can take up a big chunk of your grade and they can sometimes be stressful, but if you have a good plan you should be all set. In class today we spent 30 minutes working on our speeches and I noticed that my outline was kinda vague in what I’m planning on saying, so today in class I added a little bit more detail next to my bullet points to give me a better direction in where I’m going in my speech and what I’m going to say. In class we also found out that we can get extra credit points for doing a video or powerpoint, so I’m going to work on that for my speech. Right now I’m having a hard time thinking of a prop to use for my speech, so over the weekend that’s what I will be thinking about. Also, I need to rehearse this. My last speech I rehearsed it and I thought I was on time but when I presented it when a lot faster than my practice. Since this time around the speech is three minutes, when I rehearse I want to get into the 4 minute 30 second to 5 minute range. This is because when I give my speech and go faster than my rehearsal I have some cushion to still stay above three minutes.
Journal 6
In chapter 13 the topic of it is outlines for speeches. In this chapter when they talk about outlines they talk about how key they are for good speeches. They can help frame good speeches and help you remember key points in what you want to talk about. One thing they talked about which I didn’t know is that you should create 2 outlines when you are making a speech. One outline should be a working outline and the other should be a speaking outline. The first one you should make is your working outline. In this outline you write down everything that you want to put in your speech. This is because in your working outline you get all your ideas that you want for your speech, and when you’re done with that you will have all your ideas needed for your speaking outline. In your speaking outline you take out everything you don’t need for your speech and keep things simple like short phrases to remember and also to remember key ideas. Using these two outline will help in making my speeches better and help me as a speaker moving on.
Journal 8
After looking at my videos of my past dry runs I saw a lot of things I liked and also things that I need to improve on. I thought that I had good eye contact when giving my speech and I evenly spread out my eye contact to my two partners. I also thought that my voice was very clear and my speech was very easy to follow. However, there is something that I can work on. What I noticed was during me giving my way to study I sounded kinda like a list and I think that it could flow a lot better. What I’ve been working on because it is working on making better transitions and also Just trying to make my speech sound a lot smoother and flow better. Also, I noticed I didn’t have my prop when giving my dry run. So I found a prop and I’m just going to use a study book and use that as my prop. I’ve also been practicing how to incorporate it into my speech so the prop doesn’t feel out of place from my speech.
Journal 9
On Monday I presented my speech about teaching a skill. I personally think that it went very well. I believe that I maintained good eye contact, and had a very clear voice that was loud enough for everyone to hear. I think that my speech flowed pretty will and the organization was pretty good. I want to credit this to the dry-runs. Reflecting on this it really helps to do dry runs because it was an intermediate step to doing a speech in front of the whole class. A thing that I could improve on is I think I could have used my prop more and used it in my speech more often. I also think that My conclusion to my speech was kinda rushed and could have been more developed. I think this was because it was my nervous while presenting the speech and I need to slow down and just focus more on presenting my speech and having a better conclusion. Like I said, overall I was pleased with my speech, but I know that I can make more improvements moving forward.
Journal 10
One person that I see in my everyday life that I believe is a great public speaker is my lab lecture professor, Dr. Simard. On Friday I had his class and there were some qualities that he had that really make him a great public speaker. First of all, he has a very loud voice that is clear to hear. I have class in the Halfond Center of Heath and Science and the lecture hall is very big so you need to be loud and clear for everyone in the lecture to hear you and He does a great job of making sure he is loud enough for everyone to hear him. Secondly He is well prepared to talk about the material that we go over in class. Yes, I understand that it is his job to know what we go over, but he never needs a script and never loses focus of the topics that we go over. Also he has great knowledge on the topic so it makes the lecture really easy to follow. Lastly he keeps the lecture entertaining. He finds a way to keep the lecture interesting weather it’s making a joke, or having us use our modeling kits. He finds ways to keep all of the students focus and paying attention.
Journal 11
In chapter 25 we learn about speaking for special occasions. You got different types of speeches. You have speeches of introduction, speeches of acceptance, and speeches, presentations, roast and toast, and many more. For all the speeches you need to approach them a different way. In roast and toast you want to highlight some of the qualities of the person your talking about while also being a little humorous and have a joking vibe to it. For acceptance you want to prepare with points of why your proud to give the speech, and also how important it is to you to be giving the speech. For introduction you want to just be brief and give key points of who your introducing and also describe their background and what they do. You also want to mention why you are giving the speech. The main thing is for all these different speeches you want to approach them all differently and there are different points you want to bring up.
Journal 12
In my speech I chose to do my twin brothers. Even though they are twins they both are very different and taught me different things about life. Growing up with them we were 5 years we still grew up doing everything together and they taught me to be stronger as a person and sometimes things don’t always go the way you want but that’s how it is. During my dry dry run I think that I’m going to just talk about the different events that we did together that make me who I am. I also want to talk about their success because they are both successful in very different ways. I think I’m going to approach this speech like an introduction speech introducing them and talking about each of their achievements and how they have been successful in life. I’m looking forward to this because it gives me a chance to talk about them and show off what great people they are and how they have molded me into the person that I am today. Also during the dry run I’m going to mention what different ways they have motivated me throughout life.
Journal 13
What you are most anxious about?
Going into the dry run I feel pretty good for the most part, but some things that I am worried about are I want to mention a lot of stories in my speech but I feel if I mention them all it will take up a lot of time and I will over run my time. So going into this I want to try and practice making my stories breif or just picking out specific stories that I feel are the most impactful about them. Also I’m very used to doing bullet points for my speeches and Not writing things up but this time I had to write up an intro and a conclusion and I’m nervous that I am going to be looking at my screen too much during the dry run so I’m going to practice memorizing it or get a good jist of it during my dry run. Besides those things I feel very confident in my speech, but if I hear something or a way someone else approached the speech then I may adjust mine.
Journal 14
After watching over my dry runs I realize that I still have some work that could be done that would improve my speech. First of all, I realized that I need to be more prepared in knowing what I am going to say. This is different from other speeches where I can’t do my outline as bullet points and go from there. I need to write small passages and try to remember the key points of the passages to help make my speech flow better. Also I got some great feedback during my speech. I was told to emphasize a point on how my brothers left and impact on me and center it around how there’s tons of options for you to be successful in life and I think I’m going to make that a key point in my speech. All in all, I got a lot of help from my dry run, and I am going to take the feedback and the videos to help improve my speech and have it carry over to the actual performance.
Journal 15
Reflecting back on my speech 3 I think that it went a lot better than I expected it to. Normally for speeches I’m confident before I go up to speak but for this one I was really nervous at first. I think this is because past ones I didn’t need to focus on my outline as much,but for this speech I did and I was worried that I may lose my place or something. Starting off the speech I could tell that I was going at a fast pace, and then throughout the speech I felt myself calming down. Once I calmed down my pace got a lot better. Also, my eye contact got a lot better too because as I got more comfortable the less I looked at my outline and had better eye contact. Somethings that I did well on was I thought that I had a very clear voice and it was easy to hear and understand once I slowed down. All and All I believe that this speech went very well, and I’m happy with the performance that I had.
Journal 16
In class we were assigned out groups and then we got right to work. First we all agreed that we wanted to do a talk show since that would be the most entertaining for us to do. At first we were having a hard time deciding what to do for the talk show so we started assigning some roles. Aaron will be the host of the talk show and kelly and I would be the two guests that came on the show. In class we were struggling on what we would talk about for the two guest during the talk show, so when we left class we all started putting down ideas on what to do for the interviews. One idea we came up with is to act like one of the guests is already a pharmacist and talk about why they are where they are and what they did to get there. Also aaron had the idea of having some comedic aspect to it by adding a funny person like how Jimmy Kimmel has Guermo. Obviously we still have a lot to work on but in class today we will get together, and work some more on coming up with Ideas and making a full story hopefully.
Journal 17
Looking back at your dry-dry runs. I think that it went pretty well. We finished our dry runs at 1 minute and 30 seconds. That felt like a good time since our outline was very unpolished and during recording and acting it out, I think that we will easily fit our video in the 4-6 minute mark. I feel good about our idea going forward but one thing I think that we are going to change the host from Aaron Mai to the Doctor Mai show and he’s going to be a pharmacist who is also an alumni that’s giving back to some pre pharm students with free tuition. Also, we were worried because everyone else’s seems so informational that maybe ours was too relaxed. We talked about it and went over the script and we feel that the speech we have to good and mixes just the right amount of fun into the speech so the viewers won’t get too bored. We just need to find some good music for our intro and outro and after that, we should be all set and ready to film after our dry run today.
Journal 18
Reflecting back on the dry run of our group presentation I feel really good about it. During the dry run we went in and acted out our video without really playing the game or having any music, but it turned out really well, I thought. We easily fit within the time frame for the video. A lot of feedback that we got was that they really liked our idea and liked the thought of having a game show. We got a lot of ideas for a dramatic last shot from kelly so she could have redeemed herself and have another chance to win the match. We drew it up though as it was going to be a very dramatic shot, but unfortunately kelly missed. Still though that feedback is going to help us a lot and help us improve the speech and make it better. Now all what we have left to do for the speech is film the speech and make sure that everything goes well and we film and edit it to make it the best video ever.
Journal 20
MY BEST ADVICE:
I think that the best advice that I gave through the 13 weeks of school was during speech 4 when we were giving advice during the group dry-dry runs. For Andrew’s group I mentioned the idea behind putting a game in the middle of the interview instead of the end.
WHY WAS THIS MY BEST ADVICE:
This was my best advice because I’m not sure that they used it or not in their video because we haven’t watched it, but I think that some of this advice could really benefit the speech and the game could help space out the interview so not all info is thrown at you at once.
BEST ADVICE FROM MY PEERS:
The best advice I received from my peers was during speech 3 Petigaue told me after my dry run to emphasize what my brother taught me in life instead of just listing things about my brothers. So talk about life lessons more then just talking about who they are.
WHY IT’S THEIR BEST ADVICE:
This was the best advice because this really helped shape my speech. Going into the dry run I wasn’t completely sure where I wanted to go with this speech, and Petitgoue really helped me find a direction. I had to write my speech differently but it went a lot faster than before because I had a clear direction that I wanted to go. With out that advice I don’t know if it would have been as good as it was.
BIG REFLECTIVE MOMENTS:
“Starting off the speech I could tell that I was going at a fast pace, and then throughout the speech I felt myself calming down. Once I calmed down my pace got a lot better.”
This moment shows how i’ve grown as a speaker. At the beginning of the year I rushed a lot when speaking but I over time I was able to calm myself down and slow my pace and improve as a speaker.
WHY THESE REFLECTIVE MOMENTS MATTER:
These moments matter because it shows that I have grown throughout the year. At the beginning I was more shy and nervous to go up and speak, but now it’s getting better and easier to speak.
Journal 21
After these past 15 weeks there are some people that I want to thank that helped me out throughout public speaking. The first person that i want to thank is Peta-Gaye. She was always one of the best people giving feedback, and she was always nice giving it and always said things that would help benefit me for my speeches. This is really helpful because it’s people like her that really help improve speeches and make them better. I’d also like to thank Kelly because during speech 4 she was always a huge help making sure we had everything we needed and was always on top of everything when it came to the video. This is a huge help because it made speech 4 go buy wicked smooth and really helped us make a good speech. Lastly Aaron because he was a key role in speech 4 as well contributing a lot to the outline and helping pace us for the video. He also made speech 4 go very smooth and the both of them made this group project very pleasant to do.
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