Public Speaking for the 21st Century

Agency is a really frustrating thing to try to explain to people and if I'm being honest, it's not really something I understood when it was explained to me at first. Agency rarely applies to economic issues; you can give speeches about rich or poor people if you're in the middle class. It doesn't really apply to technology speeches; nobody cares that you didn't invent quantum computing if you have a good understanding of what it is. It almost never applies to issues that impact everyone like climate change. Where it must absolutely be concrete and respected are social issues. You can not give a speech about gay culture if you're straight. You shouldn't give a speech about other races as an authority figure. You should try to avoid talking about political issues in other countries unless you're doing it in an objective way. I think the best way of explaining why is with the example from a speech I watched an asian  extemp speaker give at Yale a few years...

When CNN was first covering the Black Lives Matter protests, they brought out primarily white commentators to talk about issues those commentators had little experience with. The commentators, of course, ended up putting their feet in their mouths repeatedly and proved why it is important that people why have agency on issues speak on them while people who don't have agency listen. It is acceptable for an individual to talk about issues they don't have agency with however, every effort should be made to signal boost the voices of people who are impacted by the issues being talked about. If a speaker absolutely can not get the perspectives of those impacted by the issue they're discussing, and can't avoid discussing the issue, they should try to highlight the human impact of the situation while still remaining objective. The most common mistake that is made when it comes to agency is forgetting that there are real people who are really impacted by the issues that are dis...

The information in this week comes from the Institute for Speech and Debate Summer 2018 session and the George Mason Institute of Forensics Summer 2018 and Summer 2019 sessions. Material is taken from lectures by Ashley Mason, Caleb Newman, Karon Cox, and Brian Anderson. Agency in Speeches Definition of Agency: The capability of an individual to accurately reflect the issue they're talking                                            about, especially related to social issues. E.g. a LGBT person has more agency to talk about advertisements at pride than a straight person Why agency is important:      If you're more emotionally connected to a speech, you'll be more passionate about it      If you're not directly impacted by an issue, you may accidentally misrepresent its impacts      Not getting an accurate point of view from ...

I've actually had to learn how to deal with and get around all of the problems that Randy McCutcheon talks about in this chapter. As a tiny little lady in speech, I have a lot of problems with getting shrill. I once even had a judge come up to me and tell me that my voice was so high that it was 'nearly indecipherable'. I've dealt with this first, by getting older which naturally lowered my voice and second, by looking up online tutorials and talking to a voice coach about how to make my voice seem lower even when it's still the same pitch. I've dealt with the professionalism problem by wearing suits and heels to competitions. I like to joke that I go from looking like Jay-Z on normal days to Beyonce on competition days. I deal with the image problem by covering my acne with makeup and doing my hair and nails as nicely as possible. I deal with the temperature problem by dressing appropriately for tournaments and using the raising your voice trick. If I'm wor...

Public Speaking can be frustrating because so much of how people view it is fully subjective.What can be even more frustrating is when a speaker can't control all of the variables involved with how people are viewing their speeches. Things like gender, image, and temperature may seem deeply inconsequential at first when it comes to public speaking but all of them can have huge impacts on the success of speeches. Obviously, things like racism, homophobia, and xenophobia all have bigger impacts on how willing an audience is to listen to a speech but those primarily become problems when speaking to an unsympathetic audience. Gender, Image, and Temperature can hurt or help a speaker even when speaking to a sympathetic audience. The audience is permitting the speaker to talk at them because they trust the person's expertise. These three factors can reduce that trust because shrillness, sloppiness, and discomfort make listeners become distracted from the words of the speech itself. ...

Information for this week comes from the Glencoe Speech Textbook, 3rd edition authored by McCutcheon, Schaffer, and Wycoff. Outside factors can impact speeches. 1) The Speaker's gender     Women generally have a more difficult time building ethos, even in front of female audiences     Women have a higher voice, humans have a proclivity to be more willing to listen to deep voices     Women are expected to dress better     Women's passion may be misconstrued as "Shrillness"     None of this means that Women can not be as successful at speaking as men 2) Image     JFK example     Attractive speakers have an easier time building audience trust     Attractive speakers have an easier time maintaining audience attention     Attractive speakers may find it easier to get venues to speak at     Disheveled speakers lose audience trust off the bat because they couldn't get their look...

I was first shown something similar to the extemp structure in August of 2016 just before my freshman year of high school. I didn't understand it, I was terrible at using it, and I gave bad speeches with it almost always. Then, last year, I got the opportunity to participate in the University of Texas National Institute of Forensics and discovered the pieces that I was missing. I used to just make subpoints that were loosely tied together with little rhyme or reason. Ben Gaddis, the Director of Speech at Nova Southeastern University School gave a lecture where he explained that each point should build together like a puzzle to make a fleshed out speech that follows a logical and easily understood path. This new comprehension of what subpoints are supposed to be allowed me to flourish and become a much better speaker. I also liked my speeches much more once I started giving them with the better subpoints. I got in touch with Randy Cox, the Director of Forensics at the University of ...

Generally when people sit down to write speeches, they start with a general idea of their topic. Then, they do as much research as possible over however much time they want. Then, they start writing their speech point by point. What happens when people don't have enough time to do that though? The answer is to fall back on a simple speech structure, one which is applicable to pretty much any topic. The Extemporaneous Speaking structure is useful because it allows flexibility, allowing it to be used for speeches about anything from the fall of the Roman Empire to how Chinese rice farmers are solving modern day pollution problems. This structure works better than other general structures though because it also offers enough rigidity that the speaker is not left floundering. It employs the psychological trick of the "rule of three" which makes it feel cohesive, even if a speaker is just information dumping. Speakers interested in using the extemp structure should practice wi...

Extemporaneous Speech Outline courtesy of the University of Texas National Institute of Forensics This outline constitutes the basic structure of a speech that you have little time to prepare. It should include sources if possible Should be delivered to an audience with some knowledge of the topic This structure is not the end all-be-all but it gives a good launch point for a effective speech The Extemporaneous (Extemp) outline is for a 10-12 minute speech Intro      Attention Getting Device (AGD)           The AGD should hook the audience into your speech           Generally falls into the category of Humorous, Historical, or Narrative      Link           The link connects your AGD to the rest of the speech           This is optional based off of how well the AGD already ties in      Background         ...

I stumbled across the Mind Shift article while procrastinating doing work for this class by browsing other mind shift articles. Needless to say I got stuck in the hole of the internet and ended up reading articles about oracy education in young children's class rooms for about 4 hours. I chose the two that I chose because they're the broadest and explain the most important parts of oracy education. I found this week of research simultaneously super vindicating and super frustrating. I have spent the last 3 years telling people that speech education is super important and complaining about the fact that DMPS chose to cut both our speech and debate classes. Now nobody, regardless of how old they are is getting speech education in Des Moines Public Schools. It's frustrating also because I wish I had started speech education earlier so that I could be a god tier speaker now. My first question about this set of research is, "How does oracy engagement impact students' a...

Oracy is the concept of Oratorical Literacy. Essentially, it is the basic set of communication skills that all students are expected to be capable of using but few are actually taught. Most school districts don't offer oracy classes until high school. That leaves many students without the foundational knowledge of how to concisely and confidently formulate oral arguments that they need in order to be good communicators. Teaching oracy to young students alongside math and literacy can help in many different ways. First, it can make the students better at math and literacy by using a skill they already have (talking) to learn skills that they need to gain. As they learn new math and literacy concepts, they also become better communicators which is why a symbiotic relationship exists between math and literacy education and oracy education. Oracy can also empower student voice. In schools where oracy is treated as a core class, students gain experience talking to their contemporaries i...

Mind Shift  is a subsidiary of NPR. It is a non profit provider of free education news and information which supports parents and teachers around the world. The first article I'm working off of is from their editorial board and was published on October 3, 2016. Here is the  link to the article . Edutopia is a website published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. It celebrates and encourages innovation in K-12 schools and focuses on how different learning strategies have different outcomes. The second article I'm working off of was written by Oli de Botton, an English teacher who has worked in educational policy as a 'government education adviser' for the UK and he has held other positions in politics. He is currently serving as the Headteacher of a school he founded in 2012 called School 21. His article was published on September 15, 2016. Here is the  link to the article . Math and Literacy (M&L) are currently the most focused on topics in school. M...