Speaking of Bicycles

This class we went down to the Panhandle for the first time, I decided to walk instead of riding because I’m not confident enough to ride on the road. When we got there we got into groups and watched a video which we then discussed the credibility of. I really liked presenting outside because it felt less intimidating than being in the class room layout I was used to in high school. I also felt a lot more comfortable presenting in a group than I do alone. I also preferred Looking into the credibility of the TED talk we looked at really helped me gain a better understanding of how to approach my first speech for next week.

We spent our first class in the class room, before class started I was really intimidated by the idea of having a four hour class but it felt like it went by much faster than I expected it to. We spent the class discussing ideas about what we thought made a good public speaker.  Some of the main ideas we talked about were the importance of knowing the audience you are talking to and being able to engage with them, as well as being passionate about what you are speaking about and having open body language and using eye contact.

In my rehearsal videos I noticed I spent a lot of time reading directly off my notes and not making much eye contact. I think this is because when doing speeches in high school I always had the entire thing written out so it felt like that was what I should be doing. I really hope that as the semester goes on I will be able to rely less on my notes and I want to start to be able to use dot points on my notes rather than writing out my entire speech.

In the reading by Joseph Zompetti evidence is defined as “any material that supports, justifies or proves a claim that is being presented.” I found this reading really help full because I had never thought of all the different ways evidence is presented within a speech or piece of writing. I had also never considered that when you address different audiences different types of evidence may be more appropriate to use. For example, if you were talking to an audience made up mostly of children the use of examples would be better than statistics or expert testimony when presenting your argument, however when speaking to an older audience using statistics and expert testimony would help increase the credibility of your overall argument.

In Mikael Collvilles speech he argued that bicycle helmets are not necessarily very effective, do you agree with this?

Do you think that the use of bicycles will continue to grow in San Francisco and that changes will be implemented to encourage the use of bicycles?

I think overall my presentation went better than I expected it to because I usually get a lot more nervous before speaking than I did. Presenting outside really helped to ease my nerves, I think this was because it felt like a less intense environment. I used my notes less than I expected to which I was really happy about because I expected to find myself reading off them completely. In the future I want to try and lay my notes out in a way that makes it easier for me to reference them quickly rather than having to take a few seconds to look through and find points in them. I think for next time I need to work on projecting my voice further and considering the outdoor surroundings because I am used to speaking in a classroom without all the background noise. I also want to work on using words like um less when I speak.  Finally I want to work on having a stronger conclusion to my speech because I feel like I ended it really abruptly  without summarising what I had said.