Past/Present/Future Speech Assignment

ASSIGNMENT: Past/Present/Future Speech

Due Date: 4.2.14

The purpose of this assignment is to get a small taste of public speaking and to practice achieving a comfort level necessary to exude the authenticity to connect to your audience on a personal level. Your goal will be to introduce yourself to your classmates by incorporating 3 carefully selected objects from your home. The items should represent your past, your present, and your future, and should work together to tell a story about who you are in that they represent cohesive variations on a theme. Additionally, please enclose these items in a bag/box/container of some sort that is also symbolic of your speech’s theme.

You will want structure your speech around telling your audience about how these three items represent you, what they mean to you, and where you got them. This will help introduce you to the class while also giving you a chance to work with presentation aides, and practice flow and format.

GUIDELINES:

Pay close attention to the following when preparing your speech:

• Introduction: attention-gaining material, thesis statement, preview.
• Thesis Statement: Clear, specific, and directly related to your main points.
• Conclusion: signal end of speech, summarize main points, decisive close.
• Outline: Typed, proofread, passed in prior to speech
• Practice, practice, practice!!

Speech length: 4 minutes

Speeches will be recorded and uploaded to DU Video Manager. At 4 minutes, an alarm will go off, and at 5 minutes you will be cut off.

3.26.14

Tools for Class

• Blogger
• Dashboard at http://blogger.com 
• Creating a New Post
• Creating a New Comment
• Note: For those who have trouble contributing to in-class participations and discussions vocally, you may receive extra participation points by commenting on my or your fellow students' posts
• Video Manager
• https://videomanager.du.edu/
• Log in with WebCentral credentials
• You will be invited to our class video group - here you will find videos from our class for review and download
• Uploading your own videos

Introduction to Public Speaking

• Message v. Meaning
• Meaning is social
• Ex: Hijacked Social Media Campaigns
• Meaning is contextual
• Ex: Hitler Quotes Attributed to Taylor Swift
• Approaches to Public Speaking
• Conversational - focusing on the connection to your audience and authenticity
• Pro: builds a sense of authenticity
• Con: can create a casual tone that diminishes credibility
• Writing/Scripting - allows more careful crafting of the text
• Pro: arguments will be well-worded
• Con: can seem canned and impersonal
• Performative: focusing on the non-verbal elements of speech making such as voice, posture, body language, facial expression, movement, environment, etc.
• Pro: will immerse your audience
• Con: can seem overdramatic, taking away from your argument's logic
• About the Skill-Learning Process: The more you know, the more critical you will be about your own speeches. People often mistake the discomfort that comes with gaining a critical eye for “failure.”
• As we watch this video, please be ready to reflect on any event or process with which this video resonates to your own experience

• Listening and Ethics
• No decision a speaker makes is politically or morally neutral. When you speak, you are by default editing by choosing what to say and what not to say; you are therefore issuing value and importance to various topics.
• Be aware of your own personal/cultural/political biases. We all have frameworks that we use to make sense of the world. 
• Small-Group Activities:
• Groups of 3-4
1. Please share your reflection of Ira Glass's quote with your group
2. Discuss your top 1-2 fears surrounding public speaking, find out who in your group shares your fears and consult both your peers and the handbook for mechanisms to overcome those fears.
3. Each group will be assigned one approach to public speaking and a qualifier that signifies over-reliance/under-reliance on that approach (for example: over-reliance on conversationalism). Your exercise is to create a minute-long speech that either opposes or supports the following assertion: "The legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado is beneficial to our state's residents." You may choose one member to speak, or you can all take turns. You must illustrate the characteristic of public speaking that your group was assigned. The alarm will go off after 2 minutes.