After watching my persuasive speech and then comparing it to the other videos, it was clear there was a big change in my delivery.  In my other videos I realized that the hand gestures I was making and my posture looked very awkward.  I looked uncomfortable and you can tell I was nervous right off the bat.  In the persuasive speech my hand gestures flowed better and were a lot more natural.  My posture was definitely stronger in that unlike the other videos where I kept swaying back and forth, I kept the moving to a minimum.  I definitely use less vocal fillers than in the other ones.  I was also louder.  I remember watching the older videos and not being able to hear my self because of how low I was speaking.  Even though I think I could have been louder, I was a bit better at volume during the persuasive speech.  I’m going to have to keep working on the volume.

I think I was successful somewhat.  The feedback I got from the class was positive.  I also think I was able to win them over mostly by my use of pathos in the speech.  Another factor had to have been that a lot of them were surprised that this was actually a pretty important issue in regards to the amount of people it effects.  This caused more interest in what I had to say.

After watching all the speeches, I think one of the most important things you can do to make a successful persuasive speech is by getting the audience involved.  When someone talks for a while just throwing numbers and facts out there, it makes us lose interest.  That causes us not to care about what that person is talking about or trying to persuade us.  I also think that when certain people in the class used pathos, it was more of an incentive to listen and it was more likely to move me in their direction.

I’m going into marketing as a major and I believe going for a job in that field will require at some point to give some sort of presentation.  Now that I have taken this class and learned the necessary skills required to give a successful speech, it will be much easier for me.  I think the most important skills that I have learned is how to keep the audience’s attention.  First and foremost, if you don’t have the audiences attention, then there is no point in you standing up there and giving your speech.  In order to get your ideas across, you need to make sure they are paying attention.  Another important skill that I think is important is being able to look at the entire room, left to right, making eye contact.  Before I took this class I was sure never to look any one in the eye, and only to look at one point on the back wall.  Without this class I would have probably kept doing that.  I am really happy I took this class because I know this is one of those classes that will benefit me later in life.

We worked pretty well organizing our information.  We did our body paragraphs separately .  However to put our paragraphs together we added transitions and did it together.  This way the speech flowed better from topic to topic.  To make it even better we could have added better transitions.  We didn’t have to use visual aid because the kind of art we used was sound.  We had a lot of audio clips so the audience can witness it first hand instead of hearing us talk about it for 20 minutes.  We could have had less text on the slides so when we  spoke it would come out more naturally.  This presentation was very different than the ones we did before.  Mostly because we had to rely greatly on outside information.  We had to memorize facts and details that weren’t our own which is hard because if you forget there is really no way to get that information during the speech.  My goal for this speech was mostly to not look at the screen when talking and to memorize my facts successfully.  During my speech however I feel like I could have spoken louder and more naturally to the audience.  For me to have been interested in the speech the speaker cant have been monotone.  Sometimes the information was repetitive which was annoying to sit through.  Over all I enjoyed doing the presentation.

Thulasi Pius

Giving the personal speech in class was a very different experience for me compared to our monologues.  The monologues were fun to do when we really got into it.  Honestly I was a nervous wreck before giving my personal speech and it was not fun.  I started out thinking I was going to be fine because I believed in the message I was giving and I had gotten my speech memorized perfectly but that was not the case.  After going up there and being put on the spot made me hesitant in what I was saying.  The difference in the two speeches was most likely the content and the way the speeches were prepared.  The monologues were written for us and the emotions are already put into it, all we had to do was deliver it.  Our personal speeches however, had to be about us and we had to put in what emotions we wanted the audience to see.  Watching my speech made me realize a lot of things that I was doing wrong.   When delivering the speech I never realized that I swayed left to right.  After watching the video I saw how I shifted for right to left almost every other sentence.  I also need to work on my volume.  I couldn’t hear me speaking in the video with my earphones.  I had to watch it on my desktop with my speakers.  Volume is definitely a problem that I’m going to have to fix.  Watching everyone else’s speeches made me realize the issues that I have to work on.  They talked clearly and with very strong posture.  It drew you into the speech and made you want to listen.  Watching my self trip up on words and fidget every now and then made me realize a big factor that I was missing.  Confidence.  I need to work on handling my nerves when in front of an audience.  That is one of the biggest feats that I need to overcome to be successful in public speaking.  Some things that really make a speech unbearable is being monotone and adding in unnecessary “ums”and “likes”.  It makes the speech boring and the speakers doesn’t fully reach the audience.  The image below portrays how my nerves get to me once I get in front of the crowd, no matter how prepared I am.

Thulasi Pius

Everyone knows how hard it is to sit through a speech or lecture that we don’t find riveting.  Keeping that in mind, we have to realize that one of the most difficult components of giving a good speech is keeping the audience captivated.  This is exactly what motivational speaker Jeff Yalden has perfected.  Being a motivational speaker is hard enough as it is, but Jeff’s targeted audience is teenagers.  Teen audiences are the most arduous age group to reach out to because of their susceptibility to distraction and obstinacy, which we all know.  Jeff however knows not just how to capture their attention just by his first statement but keep them like that till the very last word.  Jeff knows exactly how to deliver his speeches so that teens will be inspired by his words.

When Jeff delivers his speeches, he takes the audience on an emotional roller coaster.   For instance he repeatedly starts off with humor, and by doing so he catches the audience’s attention.  When applying humor he tends to level with the audience and make them feel comfortable by opening with jokes about himself.  He refers to his weight, his baldness, and even his height. Just by this the audience accepts him as one of them.  He is no longer someone who is telling them what to do or how to do it, he is now someone who associates with their problems and understands them.  Jeff has been through suicide, bad break ups, depression, learning disabilities, bad acne and more.  His speeches are so emotional at times that it brings listeners to tears. The passion and emotion he conveys show the audience just how authentic his pain is.  This is what touches their hearts and as Jeff put it “if you touch the heart the mind will follow”.  If you have ever listened to Jeff speak then you know this to be true and you will know that this emotional connection he constructs with his audience is what really inspires them.  The image above of Jeff delivering his speech to the laughing audience and then the shift to the very emotional student perfectly portrays this emotional bond he shares with his audience.