Preparing and giving my Cultural Hero Speech was different than my Narrative Speech in many ways. First of all, in my opinion, the Cultural Hero speech was more personal because I have to tell the audience why this person was my cultural hero and why they deserved it in my eyes. For the Narrative speech | simply just had to interview someone who was different from myself. This, in turn, also made me more passionate presenting my speech about my hero than I was in my first speech. Also it was more difficult to prepare my narrative speech because I had to make sure I was telling the other persons story correctly.
I knew everything about my hero when preparing for the speech so it was easy to put it all down on paper and organize it, but for my narrative speech I had to make sure I was relaying the life of somebody I didn’t know as well correctly. Both speeches taught me a lot about communication and public speaking while preparing and presenting them and I believe my skills improved greatly because of it. One of the biggest things I learned in the process of giving speeches is that it is not just all about the words you are speaking; body language is a crucial aspect of public speaking.
If you are giving a speech in a monotone voice, make no eye contact, and just staring at a piece of paper the whole time, the audience is going to get bored and not pay attention to your speech. You want to have your audience engaged in your speech so you want to be animated with your body, connect with the audience, and make them interesting in everything you are saying. Another thing that I learned is that giving a speech is your opportunity to enrich the lives of the audience. For the most part, it is their choice to be there because they want to learn what you have to say; it would be a dishonor to them to not deliver the way you should.
Giving speeches aren’t just about receiving a grade in class; it is about being able to have your voice heard and to show the public what you believe in. When giving speeches I learned that nonverbal communication is just as important as verbal communication, and in some aspects it could be even more important. If you want to give a convincing speech to an audience, you’ll need to have eye contact, gestures, and the appropriate voice inflection. Without it, your audience will think that you are not passionate about the topic and will lose interest in what you have to say.
I learned that giving speeches is not just talking about a topic, it is about connecting with the audience and having an opportunity to teach them something they may not know. The focus on cultural diversity and intercultural differences had enhanced my learning about communication immensely. Before taking this course, I never knew that some of the things we frequently do in America could be taken offence to in other countries. Also, I learned to not get offended by a person’s action if they are from another country than me because they probably did not know.
This class has taught be to be more aware of the words I speak as well as the actions I perform to make sure no one is hurt by what I do. Nobody is the same, everybody comes from different parts of the world, and grew up in many different setting and it is very important to keep those factors in mind while communicating with others. One of the most important things I learned from communication in preparing for my speech was to be passionate about my topic. Being passionate about my subject, in turn, would help me with by voice inflection, gestures, and making eye contact with the audience.
If I was not passionate about my topic than my judges would not be very convinced with my argument. Ironically, I also learned from communication that communicating with my teammates was very important for the debate. Our object was to convince the judges our argument was right, and to do that we needed to work together as a team. As a team we needed to come up with our arguments as well as work together in out rebuttal statements and the fire back questions round. A lot of my knowledge about communication went into preparing and presenting our debate and I believe that my team was successful because of it.
I know for a fact that in the future I will have to give speeches and or debates, whether to be for future classes or careers. However, I do not believe I would willingly participate in it for fun. I have suffered from social anxiety my whole life, and although I learned new ways to help overcome them in this course, I do not believe I am in a comfortable enough position to freely do them. After taking this course I am less afraid to speak in front of an audience, and I also know it is normal to feel nervous, but I still have not yet reached the point of it being fun for me; at least not yet.
