The Rise of a Great Speaker
I came into this class thinking it would be a walk in the park. I have given speeches before in high school when I had run for class president and for my re-election. So speaking in front of people was not my problem. However there were some things I never gave much thought to about speaking. For instance most of the speeches I’ve given in my life have been persuasive and almost exclusively so. Even in classes where I’ve had to inform people of something, I never had to give much thought about dipping into the persuasive side of it. Needless to say there were a lot of things about public speaking of was not aware of. The tape that I have in my possession shows a lot of things that I never noticed and that probably would have gone unnoticed for ever.
Our first speech which was a speech that had to do with something that was very special to us was a fun speech as well as easy for me. There are many things in my life that are special to me so the specific topic was easy to choose. After picking the topic I had jotted down some notes about things that I liked about my guitar which made it special. However the most important thing that I had to get clear in my head was the introduction. I have always been grabbed in any form of art from a great introduction so it was important for me to do the same thing with my speeches. In review of my tape I noticed I use my hands a lot when I speak, and reposition them a lot as well. I tried to make a note of that when I watched it with my wife, because I felt it would take away from the bulk of my speech if people were distracted by the movement of hands. I felt this was also a good topic for me because it allowed me to be passionate. By showing passion for something it allowed me to bring the audience in closer.
The second speech was a lot harder topic wise. I had chosen LSD (acid) which required a lot of research. Also while writing the outline for my speech and thinking of how...