Here are the forms we looked at in class. The speech evaluation form is rather common way to view speech

Here are some sample speeches. These are various types of speeches, but you should keep in mind that your most pressing goal is to create an informative speech by November 10th. 

"What is real?" "is there really such thing as a mountain?"

These are a couple of the questions we pondered in class as we considered how to inform someone about something. There are philosophical problems about reality and knowledge that people have been trying to answer for thousands of years. Presenting credible, reliable, dependable and reliable information can be a formatiable task. Some evidence is simply better than other evidence. Likewise, some sources are better than others. Primary data and primary sources are the "best" sources to have but in this class and as an undergraduate (generally) secondary sources are not only acceptable but often preferable.


Examples of good sources of evidence for your informative speeches:
Newspapers
Books
Textbooks
CQ researcher
Interviews
Speeches


It behooves you to have a topic and at least a rough outline of a speech for Saturday's class. If you have an outline and a good portion of your speech, then we will be able to work on the issues YOU have IN CLASS. If you do not have an outline or a topic, then you will have to workout all of those issues by yourself the week leading up to speech day.

In our last class we discussed a lot of important issues. A lot. We had a topic generating activity were we stressed the significance of a topic. Choosing a challenging topic is an essential element of creating an "A" level informative or persuasive speech. I demonstrated how to take a seemingly shallow topic and use questions about interconnectedness and interdependence to supply depth to your discussion. In other words, to find the significance of a topic you need to explore relationships and issues of dependence (you should ask me more questions about this).

Another key issue we discussed is organization. We have been talking about organization over and over again because it is the key to a good speech. How one organizes main points adds to the effectiveness, clarity and creativity of a speech. You have many options for organizing your information, chronologically, by cause and effect, effect and cause, by differences, by simularites. There are many, many ways to organize a speech. 

Stay tuned for more...

You have reached an important milestone. You have completed your dramatic readings and they were impressive. That being said, we need to change our focus and start working on informative and persuasive speaking. These speeches are more technical and require more structure and more preparation. The information below is intended to provide you with a little more understanding of informative speaking and just as importantly, I will highlight some of the issues we will cover during between now and informative speech day.


What is required:
On informative speech day you will need to present an informative speech no less than 5 minutes and no more than 7 minutes. This speech is worth 10% of your grade and an additional 5% for a mandatory outline. That is a total of 15% and you will not be allowed to give your speech if you do not have an outline to turn on the day of the speech. Your outline is a serious component of this speech and should not be overlooked or taken for granted. You have to option of picking any topic, but there are several parameters and after you turn in a topic proposal I may ask you to slightly or completely change your topic. There are three main issues to focus on for this speech: content, delivery, and structure. So, to be clear, between now and informative speech day you will: (1) turn in a topic proposal, the form is on the assignment page. I encourage you to turn in a topic ASAP, but I expect you to have done it by Saturday November 3rd. (2) Prepare an outline. Your outline must include a topic sentence from each of at least 5 parts of your speech, a thesis statement, all of your evidence with the sources clearly identified. I will provide you with an expample and formatting guidelines.

What it takes to create and perform a good informative speech:
Informative speeches are based heavily on evidence. Informative speeches are all about getting and presenting good evidence. This is what we call research. You need to learn about research to present a good informative speech. Research is something we all do everyday but we are going to learn about using research skills to solve research problems. These topics, research and research problems, will require a great deal of discussion and lecture. Please be prepared to learn about these topics on Saturday. I challenge you to read about these topics in your book.

Let's review some things about informative speeches:
You have learned a little about informative speeches, but let me remind you of the goal of informative speaking: informing your audience. Informing someone of something is a difficult task and you may need to use a variety of tools to lead them toward the knowledge you want them to have. I gave you a running assignment to answer three questions at yahoo Answers and the point of that excercise is to get you to understand just how difficult it is to inform someone of something (do this assignment if you have not already). What you should have encountered in this assignment is how difficult it is to answer even the simplest questions. It is even difficult to find questions to answer! Sometimes it feels like someone else has already answered all of the good questions and the questions people want answers to often seem shallow and unimportant. A lot of information is given over and over without much, if any, variation.

In one of our class meetings we discussed how to find topics worth writing or speaking about and then getting to a workable thesis. *We looked a four step process: questions - topic - questions - thesis. This is a loose guideline and you will find yourself starting and restarting the process before you come to a thesis state ment you want to work with. The general idea is that one starts by thinking of general questions about an area like music . In class we asked several different questions like who sells the most music, who owns what radio stations, how much money do musicians make, etc. We then decided we wanted to know more about Justin Beeber. With a more norrow topic in hand - Justin Beeber - we then ask more specific questions about him. So, at this point we basically started the process over again by asking more questions about the Beeb and then coming up with a refined topic - I think we narrowed it down to how and if his voice change would impact sales. You asked more questions about that narrowed down topic and devised a thesis statement or an argument about Justin Beeber's voice change and music sales. For example: Even if Justin Beeber's voice changes, he will always have a job in hollywood because of his fan loyalty, his looks, and his acting potentional. This form of thesis statement is what I have called a blueprint thesis in that it PREVIEWS the three main points you intend to talk about in that speech or essay. If a reader came across that thesis statement, they would likely expect to hear more about the Beeb's fan loyalty, looks and acting potential.

We will talk more about all of these issues and will give you exercises and daily activities to help you learn these topic better. Again, please bring your book to class.





*Sometimes you have a topic given to you and follow a three step process: topic - questions - thesis.

In class we discussed the concept of "knowing all of the messages you send." We used this conversation as a way of understanding non-verbal messages. We also spoke about how your topic or your message can be taken very differently then you intend and send more messages then you are aware. I used an example of the first time I wore a Che Guevara tshirt (not knowing who he was). We discussed how my junior ROTC teacher  (considering the context of his life) may have interpreted the message I was sending about the concert I attended, differently then I intended. My overall point is that we need to try to understand how the messages we are sending may be interpreted differently from different points of view. These messages we want to concern ourselves with range from nonverbal messages to being aware of how others may perceive what we are saying because of how our audiences sees us in their minds.


We also discussed your dramatic reading speech in more detail. In general you are all picking good pieces but I want to reiterate some of the things we talked about. I can see from the documents that you turned that a few of you maybe misunderstanding what I am asking for and a couple of you are missing some things.

This dramatic speech is supposed to be in SOMEONE ELSE'S words and NOT your own. It should be a poem, song, part of a play, movie or book etc. This is not a speech that you have written (except Samantha).

There are two parts to your dramatic reading, an introduction and a main body. Your introduction will include the central theme or thesis and the title of your piece(s). The body should be a poem, song, part of a play, movie or book etc. You have two choices for the organization of your dramatic reading (or oral interp):
1. Introduction (max 45 seconds)
2 Body (max 4 minutes and 15 seconds)

or 

1 Body (max 1 minute)
2. Introduction (max 45 seconds)
3 Body (max 3 minutes and 15 seconds)

I would like you to remember that this speech is an introductory level speech and there is NOT too much pressure on you. I want you to focus on performing well and staying in the time limit. In class I described some of the key things we are looking for in this speech. Time management, a central theme or thesis, clarity, a small amount of organization, preparation. The most important are time management and preparation. In this particular type of speech, preparation is the key to time management and clarity. If you practice your speech over and over again, then you have a good chance of staying in the time limit and giving a good audible speech. Your speech must be more then three minutes and no more than five minutes. I suggest that you try for four minutes and practice in several different settings to make sure you stay with in the time limit. 

If you have not uploaded your dramatic reading, then please do so as soon as possible. Even if you don't care about the daily activity point (which I will still give you part of if you upload your document by Friday at noon), it still helps for me to see what you plan to read. 

If you already turned in the assignment and did not do the assignment correctly by wrote out a speech, having a piece that is significantly too long or too short, or missing all or part of your introduction, then I will still give you your full daily activity point if you turn it in by Friday at noon (I would like to give you feed back if necessary). 
 
I look forward to seeing your performances on Saturday!

Assignments for Class on Saturday October 6thThere are TWO assignments for class this week. 1) Fill out the form below and press submit. 2) Answer 3 questions at yahoo answers and wait for a response. The form is an activity that will help you understand the various parts of a speech. You are going to outline an informative speech about what YOU have leaned about speaking and you will also to plug in information from your book or the internet that will help you compose points in a speech or compose paragraphs in an essay. The second assignment is about understanding what it takes to inform someone about something. You can find Yahoo answers HERE and if there are any questions, please let me know. You can post the links to your answers in the Blog section of the website. You can answer questions about absolutely ANYTHING you want. 

As I explained before, I would like you to answer three questions in the yahoo answers website. You can pick any topic that you are familiar with and answer questions about them. Please share your answers, if you are comfortable doing that and tell us about your experiences. Did anyone have their answer chosen as the "top pick?" How did you feel when you were waiting? Did it take along time? Does anybody use this website regularly? 

After you have participated in this process a little bit, I want you to think about things like:
What does it take to trust someone's information?
What if your answer was wrong?
Does it matter that the information is on the internet?
Does it matter that no one has to know who you are?

Posting answers or commenting is NOT required. But please feel free to comment and post.

Today in class we talked about cultural analysis as a form of audience analysis. I explained Tricia Rose's analysis of hip hop culture and how she tells us that there are three main aspects behind any expression of hip hop culture that make it hip hop: Flow, layering and rupture. 

We looked at two videos to get deeper into the meaning of layering and intertextuality. Tallib Kweli's Four Women and Nina Simone's Four Women (you can see those below). We also saw how people used this song and the concepts in movies and other works or art.

We also talked about what the essence of culture is (at least in this one theory of culture): assumptions, values and artifacts. This theory (explanation and understanding) about culture comes from the Onion model of organizational culture. We looked at different cultures and examined how an audience of different cultures may have different assumptions, values and artifacts in a number of respects that inform how the audience perceives us and our messages; as well as how we see them and how we tailor our messages to them.

We have two goals over the next several weeks. 1) We need to understand enough about dramatic reading and oral interpretation to be able to perform a 3-5 minute piece well. 2) We need to learn more about informative speaking. We need to know what an informative speech is and how to give one. The informative speech structure is extremely similar to a five paragraph essay. 

Watch BOTH of these videos.

Make sure to bring something that you think you may want to read for your dramatic speech.

Here is a writing resource that I would like you to know about. There is a lot of information that everyone (EVERYONE) can use. Even if you know how to write well already, this is still a helpful resource.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

Here are videos for the next class. These videos are examples of everyday people doing dramatic readings and some other stuff. You DO NOT need to watch every second of every video. Just look at some as examples and see how they do it. Find your own examples of good and bad ones and we may discuss and/or watch them in class.