Book Chapters

 

Group 2

This is Elizabeth Mata with Group 2 and I was nervous with working with a group when beginning this class. I have had a good experience with my group completing our first presentation. Our group was assigned chapters 4, 5, 6, and 8 from our textbook, and these chapter provided a lot of great information to help us start this class off. To me giving a speech is always something I find nerve racking but getting the chance to work with my group to prepare for our speech while learning about these topics definitely helped me feel more prepared for this class. I took the role of presenting chapter 7 units 4,5,6. Chapter 7 is about supporting your ideas when giving a speech. It was a surprise to learn all the different ways that you can support your ideas when giving a speech. I came to realize that I personally have been swayed by some of these tactics.

Although I enjoyed learning about my chapter assigned to me, working as a group on an online class was a very new experience. Since this was my first time doing group work online I was nervous but once I was put together with my group in a break room I realized I might not be the only one that was nervous. Since I realized this I decided to take initiative and volunteered to make our group chat. Once I was able to get it together me and my team immediately got to working on our assignment, it seemed like everyone was more comfortable texting our ideas together. Figuring out how we were going to split our work with the amount of information to cover took little while but eventually was worked out.

The rest of the topics my group covered were developing your purpose and topic, preparing to research your topic, and lastly organizing and outlining your speech. I believe that all the most important points were covered by my group from each chapter.  When it came to chapter 8 this was actually split amongst us and I ended up covering the last unit of this chapter. In this unit it was a summary of different outlines that come with preparing a speech. At first I believed that you only require one outline but once I studied this unit I learned the different outlines should be preparing. The one outline that stuck out to me is one I had not considered in my personal presentations which was the speaking outline, I was unaware that I had never really planned a speaking outline. This helped me be more prepared for this class and its future presentations.

Not only did I learn a lot in preparing our presentation but I also learned from the other groups that presented the other chapter. The first group to present started with the foundation of public speaking which is helpful to understand further points in public speaking. Some of the points they presented may some times obvious but a lot of times they might be overlooked so it was a great reminder of ways you can be mentally prepared for your speeches.They also provided information to keep in mind about audiences that would help in delivering the speech in a way the audience can relate to or be engaged with.

Another group presented about the different types of speeches can be given. That is when I learned about the differences and realized this presentation is considered an informative speech. This was considered an informative speech due us presenting the information in the chapters and not inserting biases. In this speech we only provided facts. I also leaned from them how persuasive speeches can be used and how the right was to present them is. It is good to know that persuasion does not have to have negative intentions.

Group 3 also did a great job in presenting their chapters and providing valuable information. They covered chapters 9, 10, and 11. Out of these chapter the one I found the most interesting was chatter 10 which was using language effectively. This was the most interesting to me because it makes you think about how you may have all the correct information and great points but if phrased in a way the audience may not get and the may lose interest or miss your point entirely. You also want to come off in a way that everybody feels included in the information you are providing in your speech. I also appreciate the helpful tips the provided to help understand the different things we can avoid in out speeches to keep our audience engaged.

Although speeches are mostly about the way we speak and the language we use chapter 11 reminds us it is not only about the audio. In chapter 11 we are reminded about the visual aspect of out speeches. Most of the time when someone is giving a speech they will almost always have a visual aspect to the speeches. The different ways to have visuals in our speeches are handouts, whiteboards, videos, even another person as human assistance. In our speech our visual aspect was our slideshows with our chapter information. Even though the visual aspect is an Important part of the speech , we do not want it to be overbearing the actual speech so it is best to keep the visuals minimal.

All of the groups presentations really help us feel more prepared for our speech class. Not only were we able to create it great presentations for class but we were able to learn so many helpful things to help us on our journey in this class. At first I did not think working with a group in an online class was possible but luckily not only was it possible it was a fun experience to learn together as a group of different things that would make our speeches better.

I am very glad that Professor Sinkoff decided our first assignment would be one with so much helpful information that would prepare us for her class.