Developing Credibility with Your Audience

What I found useful in the reading was the four dimensions of credibility. The first dimension is competence the speaker has to understand their topic in order for the audience to take them seriously. I understand that you must know what you are talking about before you present your topic because if you present your speech without researching your topic people are not going to want to listen. The audience can tell that you are not prepared. The second is trustworthiness where the speaker must have the audience’s true needs at heart. The third is dynamism the speaker must keep their audience listening at all times by showing passion into what he or she is saying. I think that by showing passion it allows the audience to see that you enjoy talking about your topic and if you’re enjoying it they would enjoy listening to it. The fourth is sociability where the audience feels comfortable asking the speakers question. Sociability is important because you don’t want to feel that the speaker has more authority then the audience then a person in the audience would never ask a question or find the speaker approachable. With this in mind I hope that I can take this and use them as guidelines when I am preparing my speech so I can get the audience involved.

Audience Analysis

Knowing your audience is important when giving a speech. I think for an audience to enjoy listening to a speaker the speaker must some how relate to them. For example in that video that we had to watch about drinking, that caught my attention and made me want to listen to his whole speech because I could relate to it. I am going to try and use it in my speech by thinking about how my topic can some how relate to everyone. I would also try and get my audience involved when I am giving my speech whether it be answering questions that they have or doing an activity.

Drinking and Pollution videos

Drinking video:
The attention getter really grabbed my attention because I was like “what is he doing?” It was a good way to start off his speech and a good way to tie in with his topic. Matthew had some good facts about his topic and he had visuals for his audience to see. The way he tied everything at the end together was a good way to provide closure. From Matthew’s speech I learned that there are no boundaries to my attention getter and it always better to see visuals.
Pollution video:
I didn’t really like this video that much because she didn’t really do anything to grab my attention and she started off with “Hi my name is….” From this video I learned not to start off like how she did and to meet the requirements of the speech.

Conducting Research Interviews

From this section I have learned how to be prepared for a research interview. It tells me the types of question that I can ask and how to develop them. It also tells me when to use the type of questions which would be useful in my next research interview. The main thing that I’m getting from this section is to be organized and prepared when doing an interview. I guess before an interview I have to write down what I know and what I want to know so that way I’m not wasting my time or the interviewee’s time. It also taught me how to integrate my information that I got from the interview. Like it says I could use a interesting quote from the interview in the introduction to catch my audiences attention, which I will keep in mind for my speech.

Speech Videos

The videos taught me that the library is a very helpful place to gather information and if I had any questions the librarians are there to help me. I know when I go to the library I feel like I’m not supposed to bother the librarians even if they are there to help me. What I also found helpful that I will start doing is to make a list of what I know about my topic and write what I want to know about it. That way when I go to the library I know what I’m looking for.
The speeches in the videos taught me to try and relate my topic to my life. I guess that way it would be easier for me to remember because I can relate my topic to an experience that I had or going through.

Conducting Research Interviews

I don't think that I have ever done a professional research interview before. I have talked to some people to gather information for an essay but the information that they have told me could have been found on a website, but then again most of the people that I have talked to was a friend. But I think that I have done a research interview back in middle school when we had to call certain jobs and find out what they did. That wasn’t scary at all because we had to talk to them over the phone. Having an interview on the phone I can deal with, its just the in person thing is what stresses me out.

What I found interesting

What I found interesting in reading was the sources of speech anxiety. All the uncertainties that were motioned are the same uncertainties that I have. Now I know that I am not the only one who has them and that makes me feel a little bit more comfortable about speaking in front of others. I didn’t realize my uncertainty about the setting. When I read it I realized that it was true, being in the classroom I am so use to sitting on the desk listening to the teacher. But once the roles are switched I start to feel uncomfortable. I guess that this is trying to say that anything that we are not use to we feel uncomfortable because we aren’t use to it. The different ways to build your confidence will also help with my public speaking skills because whenever I get nervous I can use them.

Speech Buddy Videos

In the video I learned how to relax when I think about giving my speech and that I should imagine myself doing well instead of thinking about the bad things that could happen. I learned how to breathe to calm myself down when I get nervous, all breathings deal with breathing from the diaphragm and just focus on relaxing. It seems that the fears that we all have is just in our heads and can be overcome. In the second video I learned that we should visit our speech location and get use to our surroundings so we can feel more comfortable. I think that the main thing to remember is to visualize the speech going well and to relax when we start to get nervous, well at least that is what I’m going to do. Being evaluated is also one of my fears, but in a different way mentioned in the video. What if a question is asked that I am not able to answer about my topic?

What makes me aprrehensive about public speaking

Public speaking makes me nervous because that means I have to stand in front of people that I don’t know and I have to memorize information to share with everyone else. The process of habituation sounds like it should work because by practicing over and over again I would get use to the idea and not be so nervous. The second thing that worries me about speaking in public is that I have to memorize information and if I forget something or get something mixed up I would just feel embarrassed. I feel more comfortable speaking in front of people that I know, like in high school since I knew mostly everyone in school it sort of comforted me that my friends were out there. I know public speaking is important in life like in classrooms or at a workplace.