Reflective Journal #6: Persuasive Speaking.

In this week's post, we are reviewing the Lucas Tutorials from Week 9-10 posted by your classmates. As we prepare for our individual persuasive speeches, it is important that we keep coming back to Lucas to help us understand what makes good persuasive speaking.

Speaking to persuade is one of the most challenging forms of public speaking and presentation. For this, you are addressing a skeptical audience, which adds another layer of pressure to this unique situation.

Remember that the unique challenge of persuasive speaking is that we must influence or change the minds of our audience. This means we must know who they are, what they believe, and what kind of argument and evidence will serve to challenge their points of view.

For this blog post, I want you to view 2 of your classmates' tutorial videos. From each, reflect on one key learning you gain that will benefit the preparation of your persuasive speech. Please take these tutorials to heart, as they truly matter to your work.

Please make your first post by Sunday night, and then respond to 2 other posts by next class.

As always, please remember to include your ID# in your posts. Aj. M

Reflective Journal #5: Speaking to Persuade.

As we have now passed the middle of the term, we have gained some experience with speaking to audiences in different formats, learning how to personalize, gain credibility, and integrate research in the process. Now, we are moving forward into a new challenge: to persuade an audience. This means addressing a strongly held opinion, or bias, or perspective of the world...  and destabilizing it, maybe even changing it. 

For this week, I want us to review two models. One is by Mechai Veravaidya, a world leader in the area of family planning. You will see he has a very distinct style, sense of humour, and finds a way to talk about sensitive topics in an entertaining way.

Another example is by Greta Thunberg. Here is an example of a very young and fearless young person who has tremendous power in spite of her age, and largely due to her extraordinary ability to speak with honesty, clarity, and conviction.

Both of these speeches are posted in the Google Classroom in the Week 9-12 folder. Please view them, and make observations. 

Particularly, I want you to decide if you are persuaded by them. If the answer is yes, why and how are you persuaded by them? Is it their delivery? Is it their research? Is it their experience and credibility? These are all possible ideas for discussion.

Please make your first post by Sunday night (the 28th), and then respond to the comments of 2 classmates by class time on April 1. I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Reflective Journal #4: Informative Speech Preparation.

By this time, we have all gained some experience of both speaking, and listening. Many of you have given an impressive effort at integrating the learnings from the classes as well as from the Lucas readings into the development of your speech performances. Well done.

As we move forward on to the next challenge--the Informative Speech--let's continue to add more layers on to the nice foundation we have set. 

Your classmates will have posted 11 more tutorial videos for our benefit. While I encourage you to watch all of them at your convenience, for this blog entry, I would like you to watch 2 of them and reflect on your understanding of them.

These topics range from how you develop an informative speech for an audience, how you design an informative speech, and how you use language in different situations. 

For this blog post, reflect on 2 tutorial videos from Week 5 and 6 of your choice. Describe any new learnings that you gain from these tutorials, and explain how you are integrating those learnings into your informative speech performance.

Make your first post by Sunday night. Respond to 2 classmates by class time next week.

Remember to include your ID# and Section # in your post. Aj. M