27.02.2006-Informative Speeches

Today, six more speeches.  All very good. All needed a little bit of work on something or other.  The common thread on most was practice, each problem with delivery, stuttering, and focus all stem from practice. Practice makes perfect, and today really illustrated that point very well.

Widget Blogging

This is pretty cool, I am adding this blog from a widget.  I could log-in online and all probably wouldn't take much more energy or anything but then i wouldn't be using a Mac OS X dashboard widget to be posting this, which is way cooler.

Friday's Speeches

I enjoyed the speeches overall today. Good Job to those that went. As for things that could be worked on, I feel that there were only minor issues with projection, and a wee bit of stumbling on some words. THe visuals were well used and not overbearing, the topics were very interesting, and the the delivery, etc. was all very good. I feel that even though some things were off they did not take away from each speakers speakings at all.

Monday's Speeches

Eric's speech was a good speech. He told the story well, he focused on what needed to be changed, and not just the loss of a friend/community member which I feel left his audience with a feeling of lets do something instead of a feeling of sadness and it really was a great way to make a change happen. As I said in class I would havce left a little bit more out of his preview of the story and make it a bit more dramatic when it got revealed later on (not the story dramatic, just the finding out) Not really sure if that llast seentece makes sense but oh well. I also think I'm not a very good critic yet, I tend to not focus on the shifting of feet or small things like that and I don't quite realize/believe that they matter a whole lot, but maybe with a little more speeches with exagerated flaws I would come to find these things.

Story time

Today, A narrative speech was to be presented by me-and I did just that, it was a lovely speech (well, not really) but it could have gone worse. My speech topic was on a family disease it went over quite well and I received some very good feedback. In my opinion I feel that I could have add a wee bit more on details, and changed tone/pithc of voice a little more to develop a feel for each character I was talking about. Something to work on for the next speech. My timing wound up being just about right, which I was half-expecting to be way off eventthough when I practiced my speech I was close to correct time, overall it was a good speech and I was able to do what I wanted to-maybe help inspire some folks, I doubt that but at least I gave it a try.

The Point of OP100...

Question: What do I hope/want to achieve in OP100 by the end of the semester?

I would, quite basically, like imporve public peaking skills, but moreover I would like to learn about the "art" of rhetoric and as to why from it's original meaning so many politicians and others have managed to create an air of disgust for the term. I think it would be good to learn how to implement rhetoric and be able to persuade future employers to pay more, accept my proposal or something of the like. However, I feel that so far rhetoric is a slippery slope to tread it can easily be misused (as many have proven to us) but it can also be a positive aspect to anyone's communication skills.