The video on light pollution seems to only be about 30 seconds long . . . which is only enough time to watch the introduction. Did everyone else experience this, or was it just me for whatever reason. It was a bummer too, not only because it gave me less to review but light pollution is a subject I am interested in. Going off of what I saw, I thought her opening sounded well organized and that perhaps she had a rather large interest in the effects of light pollution as well. I did think that she looked at her notes rather often, but I wonder if that is to be expected with longer speeches. I sure hope that it is more acceptable! Also, I thought that the quality of the recording was very poor, which in itself wasn't her fault at all but it did make me disinclined to watch the video.
The very first thing that I noticed about the "drinking" speech even before I hit the play button was that the "about" paragraph refers to the speaker first as "Matthew," and then as "Anthony." WHO IS THIS GUY? I suppose I will just call him "Manthony." First, I thought that Manthony had a lot of good points. I would imagine that drunk driving and the effects of alcohol in the body and on human metabolism is one of the most available research subjects out there, so I am sure that he had a huge wealth of statistics and research data to draw from in writing his speech. That said, I didn't care for it too much. i thought the opening bit with the retching noises off to the side of the room, while certainly an attention-getter, was a bit crass. He also makes this weird sucking noise with his mouth in between thoughts, and that noise is one of my pet peeves. I have one person in my life that makes that sound all the time, and it drives me nuts. I really hope that I never wake up one morning to find out that I have been making the same noise my entire life, because that would totally kill a piece of my self-righteousness.
I did not find Manthony to be terribly engaging. It felt more like he was reading words off of paper than giving a speech. I think that could just be the way that his nerves manifest themselves. I know a lot of people with stage fright that use a monotonous "whatever" attitude as a defense mechanism. I also think that it would have been helpful to set up his notes on the projector beforehand so that moving to and from the projector would have been less awkward and not disrupted the flow of the speech so much.
I learned a lot from Manthony and his "Drinking" speech, even if a lot of it was more along the lines of what not to do. I definitely want to be prepared for this next speech that we give, and I want to practice it in front of people so that I don't have to depend on my notes as much. And so I remember to slip in my references. Any speeches that we give in the future I will definitely have any kind of visual aids set up ahead of time so that I can move easily between speaking and emphatically gesturing towards my aid. And I may make do without graphic sound effects. Unless they are dinosaur sound effects, which are appropriate for any situation.
I tried to watch the light pollution video and had the same results and terrible sound. I had a lot of the same criticism of "Manthony" as you did, and I tried to keep in mind that this was probably his first speech like this. It bothered me to watch him fumble with the projector, only to just read what it said. I feel like if you are going to use media in a speech it should be a graphic, or something eye catching and not just the words you are reading. I did really like the way he worked some of his statistics about drinking and driving and health into numbers that related to the people in the class. It made it very real how many people are affected by excessive alcohol use, and he used his audience numbers to illustrate that. I agree that a lot of his speaking attitude and lack of eye contact was due to nervousness, and it was enlightening to see a video like this on our book website. There were some things to learn from it as far as things not to do, and some good things like bringing the audience into your speech.
ReplyDeleteFirst I would like to say that I really enjoy reading your posts. I always find them interesting and entertaining. I found the name you gave him "Manthony" hilarious. I also agree with pretty much everything you had to say. I strongly disliked the "vomiting" sounds he made for his attention-getter, they were a little disturbing for me but I guess it did catch my attention. The problem was that for some reason the video was not loading right and I had to keep reloading it and having to hear the "sound" over and over. I can't really say that I learned much from this speech, he did have very strong statistic with great impact power but he relied way too much on them. Maybe if he wouldn't have used the visual aid his speech would have been more engaging. I guess that is a perfect example of how your visual aid can hurt you speech. I will definitely keep that in mind for future speeches.
ReplyDeleteYes, I noticed the same thing about the “Light Pollution” speech. It only lasted a few seconds, and I liked what I saw. Courtney was confident, and stated 3 ways light pollution affects everyone. It would have been nice to see more, but I liked how she opened up her speech. The “Drinking” speech was not a favorite of mine. I lost interest in that speech early on for a variety of reasons. Matthew was rather boring (I am sure he is a very nice person), and he used way too many statistics in his speech. I got lost with all of the numbers. He fumbled around with the transparencies which in my opinion were not effective either.
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