Group Presentation Reflection

        This first group project was honestly a great way to start and introduce this class that way we can have a good understanding of this class. Not everyone has the same expectation when it comes to taking a speech class for the first time. For example, me, I didn’t know what to expect. All I can think about is doing individual speeches in front of the whole class but thankfully this class is online, and we work among groups, so it isn’t so bad. All three groups presented great presentations on how to prepare yourself for a speech, resources to support your speech, types of speeches, and other great information. A lot of information was provided, and it made me understand and realize that there is so much more than just a simple “speech”. I will most definitely gather and use all information and resources my classmates provided for future speeches and most definitely use it for this class. Right after this presentation I had a clear understanding of this class and as this class continues to go on I will obviously learn more about the types of speeches and other important information.

       To start off, Group 1 spoke about certain people who have an issue and don’t have an issue when it comes to presenting speeches. They broke down how you can properly decide what type of topics you can talk about. They also explained how the topics you talk about can change your audiences’ lives, education, which is true. When giving a speech this is the type of effect you want to have with your audience. You would want your audience to keep your speech in mind and gather all information you’re providing. As we all know, not everyone is comfortable with speaking in front of an entire audience, I agree with this because I can relate to this. Being nervous to speak in front of an audience can be very nerve racking to some of us but group 1 gave some great advice on how to overcome that fear. They advised that you act with confidence, if you do this no one will know you are nervous but yourself. An important thing that you can also do is practice. The more practice you do the better you will get at it, and you will most likely overcome that fear. This may be so out of topic but with the fact of acting with confidence and practice, this relates to my job when I first started working as an MA, when it came to doing my first blood draw, I was nervous and lacked confidence, but obviously with more practice I overcame that fear and now perform blood draws like nothing.

     Moving forward, Group 2 went more in depth with the types of resources you can use to support your speech, how to have an organized speech, how to deliver your speech, and how to and what words you should use for your speech. When you’re giving your speech, you want to make sure you use strong evidence to back up your topic. Evidence that you can use can include online resource, articles, ted talks, etc. Maybe you want your audience to have visuals, so you can use graphs, statistics. They also gave examples of organizational patterns and the difference between them. For example, Problem-solution patter vs. Monroe’s motivated sequence, these were just examples that we may use as an organizational structure to organize our speech. This is my first speech class so there were many things that I did not know, like knowing different modes of delivering a speech and how throughout time the definition of certain words changed. An example is how foolish originally meant nice and now it means ignorant. Its crazy to think that words changed overtime and I honestly didn’t know that. They also gave tips on what not to do when it comes to providing your speech like having overloaded slides, using to many words because this is not what you want to want to use for your audience. You want to have your audience’s full attention and their interest in your speech not bored them and have them half asleep.

    Lastly Group 3, broke down how to either give an informative speech, argumentative, and persuasion. They gave off ethical principles to keep in mind when you are doing any type of speech, make sure you have empathy towards your audience, honesty, respect, accountabilities, etc. You obviously want to make sure you are being honest with your speech; you don’t want to be giving off false information to your audience. If you are somewhat unsure on how to start your speech or if you’re in doubt of your organization, you can come up with a checklist. Which in my opinion is a great thing to do because that’s how I will know the things that I need and if I miss anything I will know. Group 3 also gave advice on skills that you can use for group presentations which is great for this class since we do group presentations. You obviously want you and your group to be creative and have great coordination. In our group (group 2) we divided the chapters between our group members, the pages of the books, we each had our own tasks. This all leads to the 4 stages of preparation: agreeing to a topic, dividing responsibilities, assigned presentation roles, and enacting quality control. These are key factors to have when it comes to doing any type of group project. You want to make sure that everyone has a task to do so that you and your group can properly deliver the information.  When it comes to presentations among your group it’s a good idea to take in notes and advice from your group members. They may give out great feedback to better your group presentation. Rehearsing it among each other is also a smart thing to do because you guys can catch into “mistakes” or come up with better transitions that you didn’t think about before.