Journal #1

  • The biggest takeaways that I have from chapter one, of A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking, is that there is much more prepared for public speaking than I expected. I always thought that a good public speaker never got stage fright and was able to speak very smoothly. But after reading this chapter I found out that there is a five-step process that was created by the Romans and has been used since. Its called the canons of rhetoric, after reading them it makes me now think that I try this process more often than I can become a very good public speaker by the end of the semester. Another take away from the reading is that public speakers change the language and way they speak depending on the type of people they are speaking too. They do this so the audience can either make a better connection to what the speaker is talking about or the speaker is doing it so they can all understand what he or she is talking about and aren’t confused throughout the speech. There was a lot of new information thrown at me during this reading but these two were the biggest take away I had. The other information I learned was information that I never knew was used in public speaking and many terms used for how public speaking works. 

Journal #2

  • Throughout my hockey career, I have used the exact same warmup and stretching before games since I was thirteen. I always listen to the exact same playlist and do everything in a certain order or else I don’t play the way I want too. I will always come into the locker and always take everything out of my bag and hang everything up neatly. Then proceed to put my headphones on and begin stretching around the rink and watching the game or practice that is on the ice before my game. Then I go back into the locker room to get dressed for the game, I make sure that I am fully dressed fifteen minutes before the game starts so I can get myself into a mental state of mind to play the game. I do the exact same with studying for tests and quizzes. I will make flashcards three days in advance and begin to read them whenever I have free time and study over my notes up until the night before. The night before I sit down to read over them and get a good night’s sleep. I do this so I do not stress out the night before and I am still able to get sleep because I know I put in the work and whatever happens on the test I did my best.

Journal #3

  • I found that before the speech I was beginning to freak out and think that I wouldn’t do good. Once I got up there I realized that it wasn’t going to be that bad and took a deep breath and began my speech. I found that I was able to get my voice to be at the perfect volume by reacting to people’s faces that were towards the back of the room. I also believe that my eye contact was pretty good. I kept away from looking at people that I am close friends with because I knew if I did look at them I would begin laughing or smiling uncontrollably. The biggest problem that I faced was not using filler words. I kept saying um when I would look down at the paper to remember where I was at or when I was switching to another point I wanted to talk about. Also, I ended the speech very abruptly. I couldn’t find a good closer statement when practicing and then thought if I ended it with my worst-case scenario that I would get a laugh or two and be able to end off that. I feel if I put some more time into practicing it beforehand I will be more comfortable before the speech and useless filler words. 

Journal #4

  • From chapter 11 I learned that when giving a speech you should keep the number of topics to a minimum. The people in the audience can only be able to comprehend two to seven main topics from your speech. The book recommends that you do from anywhere from two to five to keep the audience from forgetting the end of your speech. It also talks about how you should save the best topics that you have until the end of your speech to make the audience walking away enjoying your speech. I realized I did this during my speech in class the other day. I saved my worst-case scenario until the end of my speech so I could end it off with people laughing or realizing that they are very similar to me. There were many other topics that I read about but I found this topic to be very interesting and connect to my speech.
  • From chapter 12 I learned about how to organize my speech and how it should be organized based on the speech and the audience. It is important to get this down because if you don’t your speech will be very choppy or have no flow to it. This will make the audience not care about your speech because it sounds bad and you seem unprepared. I also learned there is six different forms of organizing your speech. The list is chronological, spatial, causal, problem solution, topical, and narrative. Each one is used in their own specific situations. I find chronological to be the easiest in my opinion because you are basically giving your speech like your telling a story. You use smaller topics that then lead you up to the main point that you are trying to give your speech about. While at the same time you are using the ideas from chapter eleven, not use too many topics so the audience doesn’t begin to get bored or too much information in one speech. That is what I found to be the most interesting in my personal opinion for both chapters.

Journal #5

  • My next for my speech is to get the videos taken for each shot type. I need to do this because without these videos I can’t begin practicing. I have the outline set up and have everything typed out and ready to practice. I am worried that if I begin to practice without the videos then I won’t be able to get the correct timing down. I want to look at the videos and see if I should put them in slow-motion or if I should leave them in normal time. Once I take the videos and am ready to start practicing that’s when I will make some adjustments to my speech and the outline. I would like to present on all three shot types but I don’t want to go over five minutes by trying to explain all three and add three videos in as well. Other than those little mix-ups I feel very strongly about this speech, I can feel my confidence levels about myself getting better when preparing this speech. I think I am more comfortable since I am giving a speech on something I am good at and have done my whole life. Also, I have much more time to prepare and practice, while last time I pushed it off because I had other work I had to do. I think this will make me more confident in myself and be able to give a much better speech than last time, I won’t be saying as many transition words as last time.

Journal #6

  • What I took away from reading chapter 13 was how to create a smooth outline. I found this very helpful because for me I do not know how much or how little I should have on my outline. It talks about how you should create two separate outlines. The first outline should have all of the information that you need you would like to talk about, it should go into more details. Then the next one should be the one that you use to look at while delivering your speech. This one should have very little sentences but instead should have keywords and short statements that will help remind you how to stay on topic and say everything that you would like too. I found this helpful because when I wrote my first outline I kept changing my outline, I would have it long then switch it back to short. I would always run into the problem of not being able to remember what other information I wanted to add since I only had my key points and didn’t want the outline to be too long. Now I want to strengthen my outlines by slowly making them smaller and eventually have just a couple of bullet points but still give a good in-depth speech.

Journal #7

Journal #8

  • Doing the two dry runs was very helpful for me because it allowed me to get feedback from 5 different people. This helped because my first time giving the speech I had a very tough time with my opener. I had a couple of openers but I didn’t know which one I should choose. I asked my partners afterward if I should stick with the opener I went with or use one of my others. They then helped me critique my opener to make it much better. They also told me to work on using fewer filler words. This then allowed me to go and fix my outline very quickly before I gave my next dry run. The other thing I had to work on was getting my timing down. I then gave my next speech with more confidence the next. The second time I went through my speech it was a lot smoother. I was able to make it inside the time slot it had to be in. I also didn’t include my video during my presentation. So this means that even if I was a little bit slower or faster during my real speech that I will still be inside the time slot. These dry runs have really helped boost my confidence and make my speech much better.

Journal #9

  • I feel like overall I did much better during that speech than I did during speech one. I felt more confident with myself and what I was speaking about. I feel that I was less nervous since I knew what I was talking about. I have had to coach people in the past on how to play hockey so this helped me out a lot. The only difference is that I felt more constrained than I normally do since I had a time limit. I got a lot of different comments about what I need to work on. I feel that some of them I do need to work on and the others were just about my video. I got needless filler words and more eye contact for things that I need to work on. I completely agree with the eye contact during my speech. I felt that I was even looking down to much while I was explaining how to shoot. Then for the filler words, I have noticed that I won’t pick up on my self using filler words but everyone in the audience does. I think for now I need to fix that is to practice my speech in front of 4-6 people instead of just one to make me more nervous. Then they can tell me when I used them so that when I go to practice it again I will know where and when I tend to use them.

Journal #10

  • I consider my dad to be a very good public speaker. He is giving speeches for work at least once a day to tell his fellow colleagues what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by. I have never been able to know what he talks about or seen him give a speech. He works for intel but the work he does is very classified. I have seen him practicing for a couple of them when I was really young and he was working for a different branch of intel. He always stands in the front of the room with his hands always up in front of him, so that he can easily give hand gestures to describe what he is talking about. He also has a system of how he looks around the room while speaking. I can’t remember if he used filler words during his speech since it was so long ago. He also told me that he has an outline created for every time he gives a presentation or speech. He always tells me you need to be ready for anything to happen during a speech and be able to go into deep discussions to explain what you’re talking about. The biggest thing that I took away from my dad’s public speaking background is that you need to show that you want to be there and you need to know more information than the audience so they can trust to listen closely to you.

Journal #11

  • In chapter twenty-five, they talk about the different types of speeches that you can give. They also give you some tips and tricks to help you become better at giving all different kinds of speeches. It talks about knowing what type of speech you are giving before you create an outline or give the speech. This is important because you don’t want to give a funny aspect to your speech when you are giving a eulogy. Although the book did say that it was ok to add a little bit of humor to your speech. I have always liked adding humor so I can laugh off my nerves and get the audience’s full attention. But you don’t want to turn your speech into a comedy show. I enjoy the comedy aspect so I feel that my best speech to give is a toast or a roast. I also like to get serious as well, so another speech that I think I would enjoy giving is an inspirational speech. Overall this was a good chapter that helped me learn the speech types and also gave me some pointers for each type of speech.

Journal #12

  • My speech is taking the form of a toast. I am tending to have my opener that shows that I am in fact doing a toast. I find this one to be the easiest since you can make it serious but at the same time, it is supposed to be funny. I feel like that is how I normally tell stories about my friend Glenn normally. I also really enjoy how I have the flow of my speech down as well. Right now I have a good intro and then for my body, I split it up into three different parts. I split it up into talking about how we met, how sincere and deep our friendship, and then throw in a funny story from when we were younger. Then for my conclusion, I am going to try to make it more serious again by talking about how our friendship is just at its beginning and we will always stay best friends. I then hope to get some feedback today during the dry-dry run about my outline. Hopefully, it is full of good reviews and nothing major needs to be changed about my speech.

Journal #13

  • I feel like my strengths coming into the dry run are that I have a very good set up for my speech. I think the way I’m presenting it will make the audience stay focused. I am going to describe how we met then I’m gonna go into a deep talk about our friendship and how close we are. Then I’m gonna tell a story about us doing something funny but stupid. I had to pick a story that was appropriate and funny for class. My main worries with the dry run are what my conclusion is gonna be and if it will sound good to other people. I am leaning towards saying my last regards to him. My other worries are taking to much time to deliver my speech. I know I can talk forever about stories, memories we have, and describing how we met. I am normally worried about being too short but this time I think I may go way over time.

Journal #14

  • I feel like my strengths coming into the dry run are that I have a very good set up for my speech. I think the way I’m presenting it will make the audience stay focused. I am going to describe how we met then I’m gonna go into a deep talk about our friendship and how close we are. Then I’m gonna tell a story about us doing something funny but stupid. I had to pick a story that was appropriate and funny for class. My main worries with the dry run are what my conclusion is gonna be and if it will sound good to other people. I am leaning towards saying my last regards to him. My other worries are taking to much time to deliver my speech. I know I can talk forever about stories, memories we have and describing how we met. I am normally worried about being too short but this time I think I may go way over time.

Speech #15

  • I really enjoyed being able to give a speech about my best friend. I wish he was there to hear it but he knows how much he means to me and I know he feels the exact same way. I felt like I did a much better job of using fewer filler words during speech #3. I also felt a lot more confident when going up to present, but while I was up there I felt like I went blank on my lines. I knew that I was looking down to much and when I looked up I felt like everyone was giving me weird looks. I know they weren’t but I always tend to think in the most negative way possible. Next time I have this feeling I’m gonna try just taking a quick breath and tell myself you are doing good. I had almost every classmate tell me that I need to work on my eye contact for the next speech. I totally agree with their feedback and will come more prepared and confident throughout the speech. I also think that I psyched myself out because this was my first time going on the first day, I also went third. I still have been getting good notes on how my voice is very loud and that it is being projected very good to the back of the room. I also received a lot of feedback saying that I look more confident and that I improved a lot since speech one. Overall I felt like I still did good during this speech but I messed up a little bit with my eye contact but that will be an easy fix before the next speech.

Journal # 16

  • Since the last class, I have been preparing some background information for our characters and thinking of interview questions. I had to research any and all diseases that have been cured recently by pharmacists. This is important that it has to be by a pharmacist because we are all pre-pharm majors. Then for the questions, they have to be about the outline of the speech so that we can get all of the information in that we need to get a good grade. I have also been brainstorming game ideas for our group to use as our game show. We thought adding a small little game show would add comedy and a great way to ask specific questions.

Journal #17

  • We went into the dry run with an outline but needed to decide how we wanted to end it. We also still couldn’t decide if we should have a game show added to it. After talking about it with my group after the dry-dry run we decided to keep it the way we had it originally. Once we made that decision we started to edit the outline to make sure the questions focused on the topic. Also, we wanted to make the show have a good flow. This was the hardest part of editing our outline. After we got into the correct format we wanted it to be we then decided on finalizing roles. We had to decide if we either wanted to have two students or a student and his professor on the show. We are still looking for a good intro and outro song. Also trying to find a set that works for our show is also very hard. Everything I find online has chairs already in the background or they look very bad, in my opinion. Overall I think as a group we are working very well together and are able to get our work done.

Journal #18

  • The only area that I believe we need to work on before our official speech is finalizing our outline. We have a couple of ideas that we want to work with but we can’t decide which one. We want to either add an advertisement at the beginning or add a game at the end. Most of the other groups are using the game show idea, so I would like to use the advertisement so that we can be unique. The timing of our dry-run was just under six minutes which is perfect since we need to still add an outro to the end. The timing should work out perfectly for us and if it doesn’t I will be able to edit it down. Another thing that is we need to complete is finding an intro and outro song for the ad and the talk show. Also, we still need to find a background for the green screen. I think this is the hardest part because the ones I can find are either very animated or they are being used by other groups. Finding a good one isn’t hard to do but it is more time-consuming searching through google. Other than those small bumps in the dry-run our group is all ready for our recording.

Journal #19

Journal #20