Speech Buddy Interactive Videos: Schooling Pro/Con

Making a good argument is good for your speech. Arguments have four basic elements; thesis, claim, evidence, and reasoning. I learned that in the video Jessica looks very stern and has good vocalization. She is talking in a good pace. I have to support my thesis with a claim, evidence, and reasoning. I learned that you should clearly state your thesis when introducing your speech. The Hiker used statistics to claim his reasoning. He talks about how many hikers go off track and ruin trails. He then discussed how each person causes it. In the Schooling pro and con video, I learned a lot of things. In the pro video, she talks about how schooling at home is far better than going to school and that the school system is failing. It avoids the fighting in public schools. She talks about children coming home crying because of how bad school was for them. In the con video, He discusses how schooling in an actual public school benefits from being homeschooled. You get to be around a school environment, parents aren't qualified as teachers to be teaching their children, and that the home itself isn't effective for learning. What I learned from these videos are that they each state their arguments and have great reason to back them up.

Persuading others and accepting their point of view

There's always a time when you're going to have to try and argue with either your friends, family, or anyone for that matter. It is typically hard trying to persuade people to try and accept your point of view on things. There's was this one time with my friends where we were arguing about when I took my wst class and one of the proctors were sitting us all down. I told my friends that there was this one black female who I felt really bad for. The proctor had sat us all down row by row, so we weren't allowed to pick our own seats. When he sat this one particular female down, he told her "If this seat isn't comfortable enough for you, you can sit in the front". I saw the look on the girls face after and felt really hurt. This man didn't say that to anyone else but her. My friends argued that maybe she had told him something before he sat her down entering the classroom but I said no, that is just discriminating on her size or her race. I've experienced one time when eating at a restaurant filled with another race but mine and the waiters were really rude and didn't serve us as well as the other customers. I used experience and testimony as my type of reasoning. My friends later agreed with my point of view on how that man shouldn't have done that to her and that was clearly out of line!

Using Evidence Effectively : Types of Appeals

Going into this Public Speaking class, I had already familiarized myself with the types of appeals. The four different types of appeals are Logos, Ethos, Pathos, and Mythos. I am very familiar with the first three, but the last one is a little new to me. Logos is when you use logical proof to explain something. The main types of examples used to apply this appeal is of facts, statistics, and analysis. The second appeal is Ethos, which means to give speaker credibility. To use this type of appeal, try and make the listeners feel connected to you. Pathos appeals to emotion. We tend to use stories, examples, testimonies to show you feeling in our story and to make you really feel what we're talking about. Mythos appeals to cultural beliefs. Mythos is a new one to me so I might consider putting this into my persuasive/actuative speech. I might use mythos when talking in my speech about different schools around the world who do not require general ed courses.

Speech Buddy videos.

These videos really help me when preparing for my next speech. Each of these videos gives us little bits and tips of what we can do to help us in our next speech. I love how they have real speeches set up for us that we can watch and see what maybe our teacher is expecting us to do in our last actuative speech. Chapter ten videos helped me out by informing me of audience centered language. In the video, he said there are five ways to have the audience focus on you. One is having current events related to your speech. Another is to use pronouns, we, us, you, and i. Also use inclusive language so that everyone feels included. In chapter twelve videos, I learned about vocal delivery. vocal delivery is very important to delivering your speech. If the audience can't hear you, they won't get the points you're trying to say. Make sure to watch your volume, pitch, rate, variety, and articulation. I think in my speeches I have spoken at an alright volume but maybe speaking more loud and stern, my audience will get the picture more clearly.

Impromptu Speaking.

I find impromptu speaking very interesting. I find it interesting because when going into this public speaking class, I have heard from friends of how their public speaking classes would go and they had told me of doing impromptu speeches that were fun and right on the spot. What is impromptu speaking you may ask? It's speaking without preparation. It's completely flexible and spontaneous. Although it may sound like an easy task, there are disadvantages to it. Having an impromptu speech can be disorganized because of doing it on the spot, no research or preparation has been done. I honestly wanted one of our speeches to be an impromptu because for all of us going into this class and even taking it as an online class shows how much we really don't like speaking in front of the class and maybe doing it on the spot would be easier because then we would have people just speaking and having a friendly conversation, where as in a prepared speech, we are told to say this and that, but this speech can be done anyway you want it to be.

Sexist Language

To me, sexist language is pretty much associating something to one particular sex. For example, some people might say that's sexist if you're agreeing to something someone said about a certain gender and only agreeing to them without hearing the other side of it. In chapter ten, they talk about the other side of sexist language, which is NONsexist language. Nonsexist language are words that are not associated with either sex. Referring to a "Female doctor" suggests that women aren't typically physicians. Other examples of sexist words are mankind, waitress, career woman, and so on. You get the picture. From reading the comments on flickr, I believe people are not just discussing sexist language, but taking it as far as putting their nationalities into the argument. I just saw a few comments where they said they should just take out Asian or Indian when tagging photos because people may use the words wrongly and cause people to judge the language that they're saying. Another person wrote something very funny to me that maybe people shouldn't just tag photos or point things out in one word phrases and actually write complete sentences. Everything on every website now a days can be tagged. With facebook, we usually are tagging photos that we are in. Now a days, some people like to be funny and maybe add something a little funny to it. I'm sure they don't mean harm in what they're saying, but who really cares about feelings on the internet? You're not seeing them in person and probably never will. If they were to tag people in real life, like point to them and say "yellow or asian", then yeah, this tagging thing would really become a problem. Until then, people are free to say whatever they want. That's what the freedom of speech was made for wasn't it?