For my speech observation, I watched Mayda Del Valle perform her slam poetry at the Words in your Face event at Bovard Auditorium. The event was a collection of national slam poet champions who come from minority backgrounds. The purpose of the event was to introduce or exhibit poetry as an art form to the students of USC as well as inform the receivers on the nature of the speaker’s heritage. Mayda Del Valle’s speaking technique relays this message often very strongly, and at other times, it is her strong, genuine, overpowering technique that can take away from the audience’s comprehension.
she began with a very flashy entrance; she danced around, used silly voices, identified specific members of the audience and used her wit to establish a sense of lightheartedness and energy. She told an inside joke, which she excused away as an inside joke, and the obscurity of this moment fell flat on the audience, but overall she came on and caught attention very well. Before she started her first poem, she highlighted the subject, or topic, of the poem very well. She titled it “addicted” and told us very colloquially and genuinely about how it has to do with her past troubles relating with guys, told us a story about a guy she was dating who had matching sneakers with her, and how the relationship fell apart very quickly. After setting her premise and telling us in a sentence or so the nature of the main point, she continued with her first poem. The poem itself was manuscript, which is unfortunate, because holding the paper in her hand diminished her ability to make eye contact and gesture effectively. Despite this limitation, however, she delivered the poem very well. Using repetition of the mantra, “Fresh faded with jeans sagging in a b-boy stance with fat laces and I hope that he’s a sneaker addict” she left a concrete image in the mind of the audience of the kind of guy she dates. This image was repeated at the beginning of each new chapter of the poem, each chapter talking about a different guy in her past love life. Even at the extremely rapid pace and heavy rhythm of the poem (complimented with strong emphasis and fluency so as to remain audible) the audience was able to follow her story due to this repetition and clear organizational system. Nice use of ornamental phrasing such as “he was my hit song” and the aforementioned mantra allowed Mayda to execute her complex message and keep the listener relevance high.
Listener relevance and comprehension became a potential issue for Mayda’s second poem. Much of the poem is in Spanish, and while the purpose of the evening is to genuinely exhibit the cultures of the performers, the change in language could cause an issue for non-Spanish speaking audience members. She corrected this problem by setting the tone with her intro, delivery and integration of English lyrics. The intro was solemn. She lowered her eye contact, pitch and volume in order to create a serious tone and to adjust the audience from the upbeat nature of the last poem. She introduced the poem’s topic: her grandmother. While she sang in Spanish for the first half of the poem, the Spanish was simple, repetitive, and highlighted by the flow of the music. When she moved to the English aspect of the poem, the repetition continued with the expression “How did you pray?” a question posed both to the rhetorical grandmother and to the audience in an effort to raise the controversy of this issue of identity and hardship on which the poem focuses. To juxtapose the body gestures of the first poem (upbeat, active, hip hop) she maintained a relative sense of stillness that juxtaposed and complimented the growing tension and rhythm with which she spoke. Overall, the juxtaposition between these two poems gave us a great feel of Mayda as both a speaker and a person.
Problems with her delivery often happened in between poems. She was quick to self-edit on stage, frequently blaming the speakers or her earrings for problems in the performance that would otherwise be overlooked. Her frustration was very weakly hidden with a following “just kidding.” It detracted heavily from her likability in my opinion. She also incorporated a lot of humor into her poems, but didn’t respond well to audience feedback. When the audience laughed at her jokes, they missed the next lines because she didn’t pause. Later in her performance, the audience didn’t laugh at her jokes so that they could hear the whole speech. The removal of audience participation weakened her message’s strength. Overall, she was a very strong, but not perfect public speaker, and while her message was wonderfully portrayed in her art form, she could use some practice in cooperating with her audience.
For my speech observation I attended the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars conference on Public Diplomacy, Place Brands & Soft Power. The talk was entitled: Can You Have City Diplomacy Without Diplomats? A Challenge and Opportunity for City Branding delivered by Keith Dinnie, Director, Brand Horizons and Professor at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The conference was held on Friday, March 4th in the Forum of the Ronald Tutor Campus Center at 9am. Overall I was impressed with the speech that Dr. Dinnie delivered. From the moment he started speaking he was able to hold the attention of the audience. His introduction was clear and he explicitly stated what issues he was going to be addressing. He linked the ideas to his recently released book on city branding, so to someone who was not very familiar with the topic of city and nation branding I knew he was a very credible speaker and was an expert in the emergent field of city branding. He also made a few jokes about Charlie Sheen during his introduction, which was a good way to get the audience comfortable around him. I enjoyed knowing he was an expert in his field, but was also making an effort to loosen up the crowd and get us comfortable before he launched into his talk. He spoke at a good pace and clearly enunciated his words, which was helpful because he did have an accent. Because this was a conference presented by the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars the audience mostly consisted of professionals in the field and students who were a part of this association. When I first saw the somewhat small crowd of about fifty people I was afraid that everything would be extremely specific and geared toward an expert in Public Diplomacy. I was involved in Model UN in high school, but by no means am I well-versed in current issues in city and nation branding. It was a relief that Dr. Dinnie gave a speech that was clear enough for someone like me who is not as familiar topic. He clearly defined what he was talking about. He explained that the concept of city branding is an emerging topic, so even the well-seasoned Public Diplomacy experts in attendance were learning new ideas, so he took his time explaining his views on the subject and providing many clear examples for each of the points he was introducing.
On February 20th at 3:00, the School of Cinematic Arts had a screening of “Green Guys” in the George Lucas Building, followed by a question and answer interview with the writer and director, Cole Mueller, and co-producer, Sean Meier. As a recent graduate of the School of Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California, Cole Mueller is an up and coming writer and producer. “Green Guys”, his first feature film, follows four con artists who create a Ponzi scheme through their counterfeit company that poses as an opportunity for high priced investment. The friends work together as a modern day “rat pack” to steal millions of dollars. It is not until they come under suspicion of the FBI that the men turn against each other, letting their greed get the best of them, and their conspiracy and lives to unravel.
The screening of the movie was followed by a question and answer interview with Cole Mueller and Sean Meier, conducted by a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Although the speaking portion of this screening was in the form of a question and answer interview, the casualness of the situation did not result in a lack of organization that would normally be present in a speech. The professor began the interview by reading short bios about both men, which acted as a sort of introduction, initiating the remainder of the interview. I think that reading the bios of Mueller and Meier helped familiarize the audience with the director and co-producer. In addition, this introduction to the men and the movie sparked inspiration for audience questions and participation. The introduction was followed by a series of questions asked by both the USC cinematic arts professor as well as the audience. I think that the questions and answers that followed the introduction acted as the main points that would traditionally appear in a speech. Because this occasion was conducted in an interview style, the discussion between the two men and the audience was not followed by an official conclusion. Instead, the Q&A was ended with Mueller and Meier discussing upcoming projects they were working on, which, was successful in coming a full circle from their past work, “Green Guys”, to future work, was not fully captivating and did not leave me feel inspired.
Once the movie ended and the director and co-producer came on stage to conduct an interview, I was caught off guard by their delivery and presence on stage. Although the situation did not call for extreme formality, I think that the men, specifically writer and director, Mueller was overly casual in his positioning and the way in which he presented himself by slouching in his chair with his legs up. In addition, the introduction and reading of the biographies, while great in thought, was not well prepared. The professor ended up reading their bios off a page and stumbling over his words, continuously messing up facts about their lives. What was meant as a nice gesture to welcome the guests, appeared to me to be more insulting. While Mueller clearly felt very at ease being on stage and talking, his co-producer, Meier was visibly uncomfortable. Mueller answered the majority of questions, but when Meier did respond it was often in a quiet tone and rushed pace. I think that although the relaxed and light-hearted feel of the interview was not offensive for the situation, I believe that the men should have been a little more professional in their appearance and delivery, if only for the purpose of gaining more respect within the movie industry. Although I felt that the majority of their delivery and non-verbal communication was not successful for the purpose of public speaking, I did think their conversational tone was something that I would like to incorporate into my own speeches.
I think that the content of what was discussed during the Q&A was very fulfilling, especially to those in attendance who are looking to become involved in movie writing, directing, and production. Although most of people in the audience had some involvement or knowledge of film production, Mueller and Meier did not alienate those in the audience, like myself, who lacked information about cinematic arts. For example, multiple questions directed towards the men involved the actual production of the movie calling for understanding of filming and editing techniques that were utilized. Mueller avoided jargon and technical terms as much as possible, and when necessary, made sure to define any terms. His elaboration when speaking of cinema jargon made his speaking more relatable to all audience members. In addition, Mueller and Meier used humor as a way to keep the audience captivated. They revealed funny stories that happened while on set and kept the audience entertained and alert. While the interview format of the occasion didn’t reveal any specific thesis statement or main points, I think that the questions that were asked followed, while varied, directed the dialogue well. Topics mainly covered in the Q&A included: the creation and writing of the script, the budget and financial aspects of the production of the film, the actors and individuals involved with the film, and the editing of the film. As someone completely unaware of film production, I enjoyed the question and answer as it allowed me to get an inside look into how a movie can come together to be the story that you see on screen.
I attended a speech at Ground Zero Café by Abe Lowenthal. The occasion was held by the USC student organization WMMW, which stands for What Matters to Me and Why. Therefore the speaker talks about what is important to him or her and why. In this case the topic was Latin America and United States relations because Abe Lowenthal is Professor at USC who teaches International Relations courses. The introduction was very effective; he shared personal information about his personal loves, such as, his kids, music, and mocha chip ice cream. The conclusion on the other hand was very bland, simply summing up his points and saying Thank You. The main points were fairly clear due to his transitions, which brought together ideas very smoothly. The order was effective because the most interesting information was in the beginning and the end. Also, the information was order in a sequential order, starting from the beginning of his experiences and research until present day.
His delivery varied between good and bad during the speech; Professor Lowenthal used pauses effectively to create dramatic effect and separate thoughts. But he did not make eye contact with many people; he simply would skim the crown because the majority of the time he was reading his speech directly off his paper. A very obvious flaw was his monotone voice, with no use of tone it was hard to tell when there was something exciting for relevant he was referring to. He was not conversational for the most part, until the discussion period at the end when he was very conversational. I believe that he was conversational during the discussion session and not during the speech because he was too reliant on his outline during his speech. He was also able to make much more eye contact because he was not reading is speech off a piece of paper during the discussion session. An example would be Professor Lowenthal’s attempt at a joke during his speech. He made a claim that in today era ‘people want to learn less and expect less…except at USC of course.’ But he did not change tone or pause enough for the audience to process and react to the joke.
For my speech observation, I went to see former pornographic star Derrick Burts speak at the Doheny Memorial Library on February 15 at 7pm. The event was organized by the USC’s Program Board Women’s Student Assembly, Queer and Ally Student Assembly and Student Affair’s LGBT Resource Center specifically for USC’s Sex Week. Sex week is where issues about safe sex, HIV/AIDS prevention, STD prevention, as well as a lot of related gender and relationship issues are discussed with students to increase awareness and prevent future problems. The talk I went to was called “HIV and the Porn Industry: An Evening with Derrick Burts.”
The room in Doheny Library that was used for this event was actually big for the number of people that showed up. Around 15 people were present for the event. The organizers were probably expecting more people to come especially since the speaker and the topic that he is speaking about is very controversial. His purpose of speaking to students is to inform them about the obvious dangers (health-wise) of the adult industry. He expressed his desire to talk to college students about this issue because college students who are in debt or who are in great need of money are attracted by the industry’s good pay especially because the “job” seems “easy”. Derrick Burts came in the room looking like a typical college student. I would have never thought that he was the speaker had the host not introduced him. He was just wearing a plain black shirt and jeans. If he were to wear his outfit then to a different event and occasion, the audience might think of him as not credible. However, his look complemented the occasion and his topic.
His speaker credibility was established when he stated that he had HIV himself. He was diagnosed just late last year after testing every month for all types of sexually transmitted diseases. One clear message came through: HIV can happen to absolutely anyone. Burts first introduced himself before telling the story on how he contracted the HIV. He maintained good eye contact with the audience from the moment he got up the podium. Although he appeared to be just like a regular guy, his tone of voice clearly exhibited the seriousness of the issue that he is talking about. He wasn’t monotone at all because his tone and facial expressions would match the sentiments of his points as of the moment. When he talked about why he had entered the porn industry, he looked and sounded regretful. When he told us the story of how he contracted the HIV, he seemed forlorn. When he introduced his girlfriend that was sitting with the audience who keeps on supporting him and never left his side, he looked at her so happily that gave us the impression of him being so grateful for her.
The rate at which Burts spoke also varied. He spoke a little bit faster than normal when he was telling us an exciting story about his “dream trip” to Niagara Falls. He spoke more firmly and slower when he expressed his anger towards the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare (AIM) when they stopped responding to him after he got diagnosed with HIV. His choices of words when it came to talking about the adult industry were sometimes vulgar but I think he was just describing the mere truth. In regards to his fluency, overall he was pretty consistent all throughout the speech. He took effective pauses when needed. Yet, I still think that he could use more practice for his future speeches or conferences because he sometimes paused quickly in the middle of his sentences to think about what he was going to say next. He didn’t move or walk around during the entire time that he was speaking and just stood firmly behind the podium. He was also making hand gestures that were appropriate for his current point at that time.
Burts also made use of video clips in his speech presentation. It definitely helped the audience grasp the intensity of the situation when he showed us what the adult industry were claiming about him. It is really unfortunate for Derrick Burts to have to go through such a sad experience when all he just wanted was to make a decent living. His speech presentation was definitely emotional in spite of showing anger towards the adult industry and firmness about what he is now advocating for: mandatory condom usage in the adult industry and condom usage for everyone in their personal live as well. Altogether, I thought that Derrick Burts’ speech presentation was effective. Given the fact that it was his first major speech presentation outside of his typical press conferences and media interviews, he did a pretty good job. I’m sure he’ll get more practice and be a much more better speaker in the future now that he is starting to actively share his story and advocate to students and everyone else.
For my speech observation, I went to see the screening of "Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story" with Dan Birman in the Annenberg Auditorium. The documentary itself was not very long, no more than an hour. Cyntoia's story was extremely hard to watch, but the documentary itself was really well-done and really captured what the message of the documentary was about. Cyntoia grew up in an extremely hard upbringing, and was tried unfairly in court. It was really interesting listening to Dan Birman answer questions after the documentary about the film, since it created so much controversy and buzz from the audience. Everybody was really surprised by the end of the documentary, and everyone wanted to know why it ended up the way it did. I really enjoyed hearing Birman's perspective from behind the scenes making the documentary, and the interviewer asked really great, specific questions. She really knew what she wanted to ask and answered a lot of the audience's questions before they even had to ask them. After her interview with Professor Birman, the audience had the opportunity for open-ended questions where they could ask anything they wanted. Professor Birman spoke really slowly and carefully, with clear diction and made good eye contact with the audience members. He spoke a lot with is hands, using gestures. He kept a steady pitch and spoke loud enough so everyone could hear him. During the question and answer session, people raised some really good points, and everybody got into a long question-and-answer session about the United States court system. Everybody was moved by the documentary, and overall I think Professor Birman did a great job. I enjoyed attending this, even though the film made me a little shaken up. It was really eye-opening and showed how much crime there really is in America.
On March 2nd, Professor Abe Lowenthal, from the USC School of International Relations, gave a speech titled, what matters to me and why. The speech took place around noon at ground Zero and was no longer than forty-five minutes long. Professor Lowenthal studies policy issues in U.S.-Latin American relations and shared to us why this subject was important to him and how we can improve our relationships. Professor Lowenthal wore a suit and tie to his speech, which showed he was serious and professional. Right from the start, he grabbed the audiences’ attention and discussed what mattered to him and why. He created a link to the audience by naming out what gives him pleasure and pain and what matters to him. He named things like sunsets in Santa Monica, walks on the coast and the importance of his family in his life, which showed that he is just like us. After talking about what matters to him and why, Lowenthal went straight into his transition without any kind of preview of his main points. His transition was clear and established what he would speak about next. He said, “now I will turn to academics.” Although the transition made it clear that the first main point was academics, his sub-points were not clear at all. He would discuss U.S. foreign policy, then talk about his experiences in Latin America, then discuss policies again, and the his opinions on U.S. Latin American relations. This made it extremely unclear what his points were that he wanted to get across. The positive from his first main point was his audience linkage. For example, he did not just list facts about Latin America and its turmoil, but talked about his experiences adapting to a foreign country like Peru. Through talking about his experiences in Peru, the audience was able relate to his tribulations adapting to something foreign. Also, when discussing his opinion on Latin American relations with the U.S., he would discuss how we as citizens should form better policy debates. He was relating information to us and showing us what we can do to help form policies toward better relations. Although the message of his first main point was scattered, he did manage to link the audience to the issues that matter to him.
The transition into the next main point was straightforward. His transition was “now we can talk about the final questions of why, for this purpose I’ll define my sources and passion for working and why.” His second main point was much more organized than his first main point. He spoke about how his family has influenced him and how his orientation was shaped by his parents. Then as the second sub-point, he spoke about his personal stories and how they have shaped him. He linked the audience by showing us what impacted and influenced him throughout his childhood. After he shared his stories about what influenced him in his childhood, I felt more of a connection to him as a speaker because I as well have been influenced and shaped by experiences from my childhood. For his conclusion, he did not wrap anything up, but just thanked us for coming and thanked the series for letting him articulate what he has experienced and lived everyday. It would have been helpful for him to go over his main points in his conclusion and what he wanted us to take away from his speech. I was looking forward to a conclusion to wrap the speech up because I was still unclear about what he wanted us to take away from the speech. I understood that our relations with Latin America were important to him and his family, but he never made the point of the speech clear. What I understood from the speech was that his family and life experiences has shaped him and that he is a proponent of improved relations with Latin-American. The speech was disorganized and hard to follow. The only parts of the speech that stood out to me was the audience linkage like sunsets in Santa Monica, walks on the coast, or childhood stories. Professor Lowenthal is a professor in international relations and served as a U.S. ambassador in Latin America. His background made him credible and competent to speak about U.S.-Latin America foreign relation, but his delivery made me so uninterested. He spoke at an extremely slow pace with a monotone voice. There was no vocal variety throughout his entire speech. It was hard to critique his stance and volume because he was hiding behind a podium with a microphone. He never once made a hand gesture, only to turn the page of his notes. He read most of his lecture of his notes and would constantly look up at the audience and then down at his notes. When he looked out at his audience, he never made steady eye contact with someone, but would look right for a couple seconds, the look out at the audience on the left side for a couple seconds. Lowenthal never used verbal pauses, but did pause frequently, when finishing a story. These pauses did not enhance the speech, but make it longer and more drawn out. His speech reminded me of an old professor giving a lecture to a class that he has given for his one-hundredth time. Although his speech was unorganized and the underlining message was unclear, he did speak about the assigned topic, what matters to him and why. Even if he answered the question of his assigned topic to speak about, he failed completely in his delivery and ability to be an effective public speaker.
On Wednesday, March 2nd, I attended a speech by Professor Steve Lamy, as a part of the speaker series, “Who Do You Want to Be?,” held at the University Religious Center. He was chosen for this series to share his life experiences, both personal and professional, and help his audience members think about their future paths. Conversational and relaxed, Professor Lamy highlighted moments in his life story with a plethora of personal stories and inspirational ideas, engaging his audience through delivery techniques such as vocal variety and fluidity. Although appearing calm and sitting down, Professor Lamy introduced his speech in an unexpected way; he acknowledged his own discomfort with the occasion. He claimed that coming from a Scott-Irish family, he was taught never to talk about himself (Lamy, 2011). So, he felt uncomfortable speaking about his life, as if he was interesting or important. This uncommon introduction established humility and vulnerability, and set a more conversational tone for his speech, rather than a formal, didactic one. Using a personal story, he was further able to create a listener relevance link, describing how he recently was turned down from a job as a university president for apparently being “too high energy” and “too USC” (2011). This clever reference to USC effectively established a common context and connection amongst audience members, making his speech more relevant. Subtly, he then weaved in his thesis, that “life is a zig zag, not a straight line,” and you “don’t know where you might end up” (Lamy, 2011). Maintaining a conversational flow, Professor Lamy logically organized his speech in a time sequence pattern. However, his main points and supporting material blurred together because his entire speech was composed of personal stories. It was difficult to distinguish whether a personal narrative was a main point or a supporting example of some larger theme. His speech could seem like one long conversational narrative. Nevertheless, Professor Lamy was able to establish clarity and a sense of structure through his use of transitions and signposts, such as “the other thing that happened,” “then the draft comes,” “and so I went on the job market” (2011). Especially helpful was his use of internal reviews, for instance, when he said, “remember how I wanted to be a professional lacrosse player, well now I wanted to try out the military thing” (Lamy, 2011). Before we got lost in all of his stories, he was sure to every so often re-situate the context with phrases like “now I am a sophomore,” (Lamy, 2011) to remind us how much time has passed. Keeping a common thread throughout, he repeated the “life is a zig zag” theme, when describing how he unexpectedly met an important person or had to make a difficult choice.
To enhance and illustrate his stories, Professor Lamy utilized various delivery techniques. Sitting down in his chair and oftentimes without perfect posture would seemingly detract from his credibility, but it actually created a more casual atmosphere and suited his storytelling tone. Although he maintained a consistently moderate volume, he clearly raised his voice when he was excited. Along with volume and pitch variation, he widened his eyes, sat up straighter, and used hand gestures when telling stories about his youthful days as student, such as his recollection of secretly reading books during his library job and coordinating music concerts for his college radio station (Lamy, 2011). In particular, he was effective in using his hand movements when delineating the different life choices he had to make, physically pointing out the various alternatives. I also picked up on his manipulation of rates and pauses. Although he did have some vocal fillers such as “so” and “you know,” I did not mind because it made him sound natural and trustworthy. Whenever he had something important to say, he would slow down, lower his voice, and add silence in between. By changing his rate from its usual pace, he made certain lines more memorable for me, such as “strive to do well, but make a difference in the lives of others” (Lamy, 2011). In addition, he sometimes switched from declarative sentences and asked present-tense questions like “what should I do?” leaving a pause afterward so the audience could imagine the difficulty of his dilemma as well. Throughout his speech, he spoke with conversational fluidity and maintained eye contact with everybody in the room, letting his audience just sit back and enjoy his conversation. As the lecture series was called, “Who Do You Want to Be?,” Professor Lamy clearly needed to prepare in advance, sift through all of his memories, and choose the best ones to illustrate his life story. But sometimes, he confusingly kept naming different people, and it was difficult to keep track of all them. His name-dropping was almost like using a statistic that sounds important, but does not truly mean anything to the audience. Nevertheless, I felt his stories were entertaining and effective, as he provided a variety of moods, some humorous and others inspirational. For example, he told the ironic story about applying for the position at USC, which he claims stands for “University of Second Choice,” as he was only offered the job once another person turned it down. He inserted various quotations, like “hope has two beautiful sisters, anger and courage,” and he brought in a hard copy of the book, The Life You Can Save (Lamy, 2011). He concluded his speech with a simple message, his larger life goal; he just wants the chance to make a difference. With a conversational fluidity throughout his speech, Professor Lamy was a great story-teller. Like the lecture series is designed to do, he helped reassure his audience members that life can go in different directions, as he never imagined being an academic. After he concluded his speech, people were enthusiastic about asking him questions and for advice. I hope that I can learn not only from his experienced delivery style of fluidity and vocal variety, but also remember his message.
Lamy, S. (2011, March 2). Who do you want to be?. University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
For this assignment, I decided to go listen to Abe Lowenthal give an informative speech about the relations between the United States and Latin America. This event, hosted by WMMW (What Matters to Me and Why), took place around 12:00pm and was located at Ground Zero. For those of you who have never been to Ground Zero, it is a really neat coffee shop located right on campus. It has a coffee bar in the front, a large seating area with couches and chairs and then a stage in the back of the room. To me, Ground Zero seemed like a perfect place to give a speech. The atmosphere was very relaxed and the room could easily be arranged so that the speaker could view the entire audience.
After being introduced, Abe Lowenthal came on stage and opened his speech with “What Matters to Me and Why”, a perfect introduction considering that was the name of the organization who hosted the event. Personally, this was my favorite part of his speech. Not only did he gain the attention of the audience, he was able to bring the listener relevance concept into play. He shared his passion for his friends, family, vacations, walks in Santa Monica, and even ice cream, something I knew everyone could relate to. This part of the speech seemed very natural and free flowing, but once he was done talking about his personal life, his speech went down hill. It had nothing to do with the structure of his speech, his transitions from point to point were very clear. For instance, “now I will talk to you about why it’s important”, but it was the way he presented it that had me half asleep.
Abe stood behind a podium the entire time and had his speech written out and was just reading what lay in front of him. He was constantly staring down at his paper, and rarely made eye contact with the audience. It’s quite obvious that he didn’t take notice in whom the majority of the audience was because if he had, he would have realized that if it was boring USC college students, it was certainly boring the local high school class that was attending it. Abe should have realized he was losing the audiences attention and changed the tone of his voice. Through out the speech he had kept the same volume and it became very mono toned. He would use pauses a appropriate times, but would never change his voice so the audience never knew the importance of the statement.
Abe had fifty minutes to give a speech informing the audience about the relations between United States and Latin America, and explain why it was important. For someone knowing nothing about the topic, me, I listened to about twenty-five minutes of him speaking about something I still know nothing about and thirty- five minutes worth of questions. As I had previously said, he made a connection with the audience, his speech had nothing to do with the listener relevance. Maybe it was an attention grabber, but if that were the case, he never informed the audience what he would be talking about. The thesis was either very unclear, or his conclusion didn’t match up. I agree that questions at the end of a speech are great to clearly what you said in your speech, but Abe used majority of his time having people asking questions. It could be possible that since this was such a short speech, it wasn’t meant for an audience member like myself. It seemed like a fifty-minute question and answer with your teacher, not an informative speech. In conclusion, as Abe was nearly booted off stage because his time was up and they had another event after his, I looked back at the high school kids and noticed they took had the same puzzled look on their face, wondering “ what just happened”. In my opinion is Abe knew he would be reading off his speech, he should have brought in a visual. That way he could engage with the audience and or have something for the audience to look at while he read his speech. I also believe next time he should be aware of who exactly his audience is going to be so he can prepare appropriately. For someone like myself I didn’t really understand the information he was giving and it being presented in a monotone certainly didn’t make me eager to pay extra attention. Overall, the structure of his speech was well thought, but Abe Lowenthal’s ability to public speak was horrible.
On Thursday March 3, 2011 at 6:30pm I attended the Words in your Face: Poetry, Performance, and Politics presentation sponsored by the USC Visions and Voices program. Four poets spoke; Mayda Del Valle, Rudy Francisco, Gina Loring, and Shihan. I particularly will focus on Rudy Francisco’s presentation. Rudy Francisco is a host of a large poetry venue in San Diego, the 2007 San Diego Grand slam champion, and the 2009 National Underground Poetry Slam champion. The theme of the night was not only to introduce poetry and spoken word to a new audience at USC, but also to display strong messages of politics, truth and love. Rudy Francisco did exactly this. Francisco began his presentation by both creating speaker credibility while also relating to the audience in a relevant link. He began by speaking about his experience in spoken word, and how he began at the age of fourteen writing poems and performing locally. His first poem of the presentation could in whole be seen as an audience relevance link. He stated he wasn’t a love poet, but if he were to be one he would have written this poem. Love, a relatable and universal theme, connected with audience members alone but then his addition of humor and a somewhat funny spin when he stated the poem title “Beautiful girl who works at the Starbucks on 30th street promenade I swear I am not a stalker” ignited the audiences interest. Laughter and cheers were quickly heard in the audience even before he had fully begun his presentation. His introduction was extremely strong in that it was engaging and prepared listeners for what was coming next. The poem soon began and the strength of Francisco’s delivery was quickly seen. His volume, rate, and vocal variety were his strongest points. Francisco commanded the attention of an auditorium that was not to soft or to loud. Spoken word has a swift pace that sometimes makes it difficult to catch every word but he spoke with strong enunciation and pronounced every word, which had the audience clear as to the message he was attempting to portray. The message of his love and desire was also seen in his pauses. He paused for effect and allowed the audience to react. Some of his lines were humorous and he used pause for effect to deliver the punch line. Others were more emotional and dramatic and pauses and effect built anticipation in the audience. Specifically he stated, “I love you the same way I learned how to ride a bike, (pause) scared.” The audience laughed and found humor and a connection with the fear of falling in love that is universal. The mode of communication used by Francisco was memorized which was effective in that he did need to know every single line for the flow and he was very effective without the use of manuscript or note cards, which would of been distracting. His memorization did however limit his eye contact with the audience. He was more focused on getting out every word and making sure he did it correctly that he rarely even scanned the audience let alone made eye contact with each individual.
Following, the “love poem” Francisco quickly and abruptly transitioned into a more serious poem about bigotry in the Church. To transition to such a strong topic should have been handled with care but rather he rushed into the next poetry piece. The second poem’s introduction however was different from his first poem’s introduction but still extremely successful. Just like we are instructed in class and in our textbook to open with a story as a positive icebreaker, Francisco began with a story as to how he created this particular poem. The story did change the mood, as it was far more serious than his love poem. Francisco had previously seen an extremely offensive sign from a hateful Church member speaking about God’s hatred for homosexuality. He found injustice in this so continued into a poem about the difference between the God that the church member prays to and his God. He described numerous characteristics of the offensive man’s God that would be stereotypical of the man he saw. He was subtly and intentionally stating the man he himself thought of himself as a God in his self-righteous statements. A powerful line from the speech was I bet your God “has a swastika inside his throat and racial slurs tattooed to his tongue just to make intolerance more comfortable in his mouth.” The use of analogies and metaphors in his speech strengthened the image and the audience could picture the intolerant man he was describing. Francisco also balanced his tone and included inflection in areas of upset, disgust, anger and even sadness. It was almost like he had just seen this man on the street and had the initial adrenaline running and was filled with repulse and loathing. This poem was extremely powerful and had the audience feeling the emotion of every line. Francisco’s ability to ignite and engage an audience are his strongest points. His transitions however were somewhat weak and the speech did not flow from one area to the next but was rather choppy snippets of poems that were unrelated. I enjoyed the presentation very much and found the words of Rudy Francisco innovative and inspiring. The art form of spoken word was greatly displayed by Francisco’s performance. Although the whole presentation was left vague for the poets to have no guidelines and perform as they pleased, Francisco’s overall point was vague, as one poem did not connect to another like some of the artists did. I however would love to here Francisco speak again as he is a wonderful spoken word artist, and public speaker.
For my audience analysis, I went to go see “Work It!”, a conference on gender, race, and sexuality in pop music professions on February 24th. The conference was held at the Forum that is located on the fourth floor of the Campus Center. The conference is an annual event that takes place throughout the entire day. The part of the conference that I attended was a panel discussion about the interventions, feminism/queer/of color scholars make in contemporary music and culture. Karen Tongson moderated the panel discussion and the panel speakers included (in order of introductions) Jack Halberstam, Jayna Brown, Daphne Brooks, Gayle Wald, Tavia Nyong’o, and Christine Bacareza Balance. At the beginning of the discussion, Karen, the moderator, did gain the attention of the audience, however this was done almost by brute force. It was not conversational; rather, Ms. Tongson simply announced that the panel was about to begin, however, what made her effective in gaining the audience’s attention was the projection of her voice. Ms. Tongson, demonstrated some of the tenets of delivery. For example, she enunciated her words, her projection was just right so as to fill the room but not sound as if she were yelling. In addition, she did not speak into the microphone so as to focus on one specific point, but rather projected and the microphone picked up her voice and helped it carry it across the room. I believe this demonstrated that Ms. Tongson had a great command of the microphone. Furthermore, she said had very little vocal fillers and her poise was not powerful yet present, and if helped that she had a podium so that the audience could concentrate their attention to her
However, in what she lacked vocal fillers and pauses, she made up for in fast rate. It seemed as if she was in a hurry because she sped through her introductions of the panel speakers where there were little to no pauses, and she made her sentences and phrases quick. In addition, Ms. Tongson never took her eyes off of her paper that was detrimental for the relationship between the audience and her as a moderator. The content was interesting, especially during introductions. After the moderator gave an introduction of a guest speaker, that guest speaker would then give a synopsis about their background and what their point of view or area of study brought to the table on the subject discussed. In essence, though these synopsis, which were not brief, each panel speaker used it as a chance to build speaker credibility and insert a listener relevance link to make their presence and point of view stronger. For example, Gayle Wald, in her synopsis, started out with a small joke that got the audience chuckling, this achieved getting the attention of the audience. Ms. Wald then established her academic credibility by listing her degrees and her mentioning her current position as an English professor at George Washington University. At that point Ms. Wald delve into details that made her relevant to the audience and the topic at hand through her mentioning personal details such as how she has a history of writing about music and the book that she published. More importantly Wald mentioned what she is interested and what she hoped to get out of the discussion. All of which enabled her to build as solid speaker credibility.
The panel speakers did not appear anxious at all, if anything the moderator appeared anxious, but not because she was nervous to speak in front of an audience, but rather because she was in a hurry to get every guest speaker introduced, regardless, it came off as anxious and it impeded her relationship with the audience. I’m particularly fond of panel discussions because they are very conversational and the attention is spread among the speakers and the moderator thus relieving some of the tension. However, one must still build solid speaker credibility even when speaking at panel discussion. Even as a panel speaker, one must be able to communicate a message across effectively by employing most, if not all, the tenets of speech delivery. There is a difference between being introduced and announced as an expert versus convincing people of one’s level of expertise.
On Thursday, February 17, 2011 I attended the Annenberg Innovation Lab Entrepreneurship Workshop called “The Secrets of Start-Up Funding” which was located in the Rosen Family Screening Theatre of the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
The workshop had three parts. During the first part we heard a five minute introduction from each of our experienced investor panelists including Bob Adholt the Vice Chairman of the Pasadena Angels investment firm, Ed Donnelly the Founder and President of Aderra a music technology company, and Robert McCormack an IT executive with over 25 years of experience. The second portion of the workshop was a question and answer session about the topic with the panelists, and the final portion of the workshop involved two fund-seeking presentations by USC student entrepreneurs. I will focus my analysis on the panelist presentations by Bob Adholt and one of the student presentations.
On the other hand, the investment seeking presentation by student entrepreneurs, Andy Uehara and Edmond Yee, was a great illustration of what not to do during a speech. The student entrepreneurs had to present a mock funding request, which they had to deliver before the three investment expert panelists as well as the entire workshop audience. They later revealed that they only had one day notice to prepare for the presentation which could explain why their presentation was so ineffective. Although Andy and Edmond correctly addressed most of the “11 topics” suggested by Mr. Adholt in their presentation, their inability to coherently and concisely deliver their material was the reason for their speech's ineffectiveness. First, the student entrepreneurs used the online presentation application and storytelling tool called Prezi. I think that using this new platform as their visual aid instead of a typical PowerPoint slideshow really harmed them. Andy did the talking while Edmond controlled the Prezi presentation which requires users to zoom in and out of a visual map in order to go from one area of content to another since Prezi allows users to make non-linear presentations. It was apparent that Edmond did not know to use the software because he kept zooming in and out (synonymous for going to the wrong slide) at inappropriate times and Andy had to fix the presentation before the live audience several times. Since this happened early on in the presentation it made the student speakers seem unprofessional and not credible early on in their presentation.
Additionally at one point the students showcased the product they invented called CombiForm which is a new gaming platform that allows players to physically interlock their controllers and therefore to experience video games in a collaborative manner in real life as well as on screen. However, their attempt failed because the controllers would not work with the screen provided in the presentation room. As a last resort the student entrepreneurs tried to show audience members videos of how the game platform works which they included in their presentation in case the live showcase did not work. Nonetheless, the videos also did not work. The use of malfunctioning visual aids really harmed their presentation and made it difficult for audience members and panelists to take the student entrepreneurs seriously. Furthermore, it was difficult to pay attention to the content of the presentation (which was actually well thought out) since the visual aids were deterring our attention. Ultimately, these malfunctions also had a negative effect on Andy, the presenter, because it made him nervous and as a result he lost his poise, talked faster, miss enunciated words, and lost eye contact with the audience. The student presentation was the opposite of the panel presentation. It was not conversational at all and used ineffective visual aids that also detracted from the presentation's credibility and professionalism.
Adholt, B. (2011, February). The secrets of start-up funding. Speech presented at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
Uehara, A., & Yee, E. (2011, February). CombiForm. Prezi presentation presented at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
On March 2, 2011, I attended a speaker series entitled “Who Do You Want to Be?” at the University Religious Center at 6:00pm. In this series, USC Professors speak about the evolution of their lives and how they came to realize and reach their careers. For this occasion, Professor Steven Lamy, who is a professor of International Relations and the Vice Dean of USC ‘s College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, spoke to an audience of about 20 people, including myself, about his life journey through academia.
Before discussing the delivery of Professor Lamy’s speech, I will first examine the content of his speech. The introduction, in my opinion, did a solid job at both igniting a sense of interest among the audience as well as introducing his life story. As he began, he stated, “I must admit, this is uncomfortable for me.” In stating that he was uncomfortable speaking, there was a general sense of confusion, as he is a recognized Professor at USC. Thus, we all were eager to hear more about why he felt uncomfortable and what he had to say. He continued to say that he grew up in a family where he was not only raised to not talk about himself, but also in a family where academics and reading were never emphasized. With this ironic statement, Professor Lamy made his thesis that “life is a zig-zag, not a straight line”, and he continued explaining his life journey.
Due to the nature of this speaker series, the majority of Professor Lamy’s speech was personal accounts of how he got to be at USC. Thus, because he was describing a different generation (1960’s-80’s) it was hard to relate or find interest in what he was saying. Nonetheless there were many moments where Professor could have easily compared his experience in college to ours in USC, in an attempt to establish some form of listener relevance, however, he failed to do so. He only relied on the given that as undergraduate students, we are already naturally interested in guidance for the future, and therefore rejected opportunities to connect our present to his past. This completely deterred what could have been an interesting discussion into a random lecture of his life.
Nonetheless, he did insert random advice through his story. In discussing his relationship with his Political Science professor in college, Professor Lamy stopped himself abruptly to note the importance of having mentors in life. The same thing happened when Professor Lamy was discussing a crossroads in his life, where he had to choose between two professions. He stopped himself again and advised us all to “work to give back to people” and to “work as if people matter.” At the end of his speech, Professor Lamy concluded with the same advice in an attempt to inspire us. He stated, “Do you want your work to make an impact in society? You have the chance to make a difference in the world.” While this advice is appreciated, such advice is not unique. USC students on a daily basis hear from professors and advisors the power of the USC Family and how networking and creating relationships is essential for success. In addition, in almost every single one of my classes, I’ve heard my professors say that with the rise of technology and media, we are the generation to shape the future and to bring good to the world. Not to say that these statements are not profound or inspirational, but Professor Lamy did not offer any meaningful or poignant advice that could personally be related to our lives, thus further diminishing a real bond between him as the speaker and the audience. In addition, he brought in a book called The Life You Can Save by Peter Zinger, that he advised us all to read, however he did not explain how it would help us individually; he only noted how it helped him see life more clearly, further creating a barrier between speaker and audience.
One thing Professor Lamy did well was relating his speech back to his thesis. When describing specific events, he often referred to them as “zigs” or “zags”, which helped me, as an audience member remember the overall point of his speech that life is not a “straight line.”
While Professor Lamy offered some general advice to the audience about building a life outside of college, I believe the potential power and influence his speech could have had was very much suppressed by his lack of delivery skills. First and foremost, Professor Lamy was sitting down throughout the whole speech. He was reclined in his chair, with his legs cross, with his face often resting in his hands, expressing an almost apathetic sentiment. Perhaps he was trying to create a comfortable and casual setting, however, given the seriousness students feel when presented with issues of the future, I don’t think such an unconcerned expression was appropriate. In addition, Professor Lamy did not vary his tone throughout the speech. While he did offer certain notes of emphasis to express important moments of his life, I found the majority of his speech quite bland, which in turn, negatively affected my reception of his speech. I tended to start to not care about what he was saying because it appeared to me that he was not enthused about the issue at hand. For instance, when he would address the audience with a piece of advice, he often uttered his words in a low pitch; there was no sense of declaration or assertiveness that is so needed when creating an air of inspiration or hope. In addition, Professor Lamy tended to only make eye contact with one part of the room, ceasing to ever make eye contact with me in particular. This further inhibited any connection that could have come from his speech. I will say, however, that the rate of Professor Lamy’s speech as well as his enunciation of words allowed for his speech to be understandable and clearly followed. Professor Lamy appeared to be quite confident in his speech, never expressing any anxiety. His story and points were made clearly and without hesitation or qualms. While such aspects were appreciated, I believe that since recalling personal stories are so natural and a comfortable topic to every individual, such confidence, and thus easy rate and clear enunciation are expected; I feel that it is only when one is speaking on something foreign or on something that needed much planning and research where people become nervous, and thus speak quickly and unclearly.
To correct Professor Lamy’s flaws, I think he would have really benefitted from using a detailed outline, which he did not use, that not only organized his life story, but also key, relevant points that can be taken away from his story. He should have somehow found much more relevance with the audience and our generation, rather than relying on the fact that we are unsure about the future. He could have incorporated information about current USC or Los Angeles programs for students, interacted with the audience to gain more knowledge about our interests, or talk to the organizer of the speaker series, who through RSVPs, had insight into who exactly was attending the event. In addition, he should have worked on his delivery skills, especially his intonation, so as to create a sense of emotion and overall hope that is so needed with this issue of the future.
Overall, I was disappointed with Professor Lamy’s speech. As an undergraduate student, the issue of the future is always in the back of my mind, so I was eager to hear advice from a faculty member. However, his lack of charisma and his overall lack of listener relevance did not leave me feeling hopeful or inspired as the speaker series is supposed to do. Thus, I realized the significance of listener relevance, and I now see how vital it is to incorporate this link within a speech. In addition, I learned how important delivery is, and how just one’s stance can affect audience perception. I will definitely try to avoid his tactics at delivery, and focus on trying to make my appearance seem more enthused and concerned about the audience, rather than a bland conversational-style speech.
I attended a speech called North Korea 101 by David Kang at USC. David Kang is a professor at USC and also the director of the Korean Studies Institute. It was hosted by an on-campus organization called Liberty in North Korea. The event was at Taper Hall around 5:30pm on February 28. The turnout of the event was relatively low, especially given the size of the room, and therefore, the speech was more casual. He still dressed formal and carried himself as such, but because of the size of the audience, Professor Kang was able to be very conversational with his speech. He spoke about current situation with North Korea and South Korea, and described it as another cold war. During his speech, he asked questions and really took advantage of the audience's feedback and made the whole experience interactive. He also included stories in his speech, which I think the audience left remembering. For example, his grandfather lived in North Korea, and when David Kang was a child, his grandfather would tell stories to him about how the kids played by the ocean with wooden poles and a wooden board. And surprisingly, David Kang found a picture taken recently of the new generation kids in North Korea still playing by the ocean exactly as his grandfather had explained to him. He used this story to point out that nothing has changed in North Korea because the country is so contained and that the government has control over foreign influences entering the country. After his speech ended, his Q&A was equally informative. Because there were few people, the audience and David Kang were able to build off of previous questions and go deeper into different related topics regarding North Korea. For example, David Kang discussed different theories of possible reunification between North and South Korea and its consequences. I thought his speech was effective and memorable because he spoke on such a conversational level. He had no notes during his speech, because the topic was something he researches out of love and passion. At the end of the Q&A, the staff of Liberty in North Korea thanked him for coming, and gave him a LiNK T-shirt as a token of appreciation.
On Thursday, March 3, I went to Bovard Auditorium to watch Words in your Face: Poetry, Performance, and Politics as part of USC's Vision and Voices Speaker Series. The series was designed for multiple slam poets to come and showcase their talents to the audience and communicate their various messages, which included love, forgiveness, and self-respect. The poets featured in this performance were Mayda Del Valle, Rudy Francisco, Gina Loring, and Shihan. All poets have earned some sort of major, mostly nationally-recognized accolade for their work in the poetry field, so it was not like USC was bringing in some random poets who may or may not have had a lot of experience speaking, much less be nationally or internationally recognized for their talents.
Gina Loring was perhaps the poet with whom I connected with most out of the four featured artists. As with the other slam poets, she came out to a tremendous amount of applause. Rather than briefly giving her own introduction and history like the other three did, Gina waited until the whole auditorium got quiet and just started singing into the microphone. Not speaking or going into her poetry, but actual singing. Because it was so unexpected, the whole audience stayed quiet, almost as if they were caught up in the rapture of her beautiful, pure, soulful voice. Of the four or so poems she performed, her singing precluded two of them, and the singing complimented the style of her poems, as both required some sort of rhythm and flow, but what bothered me was that while she sang, she kept her eyes closed. I'm sure that closing them probably helped her keep her focus and stay in her "zone," but it also in a way shut out the audience from truly joining her performance, so it cut the audience off from really connecting with her in that sense during those parts.
The poems she performed had a consistent but progressive theme throughout. The first poem she performed touched on the topic of love, and it was a topic that the vast majority of the audience, being mostly college students, could relate to. Almost everyone has at one point or another felt like he or she has been in love with someone else. Her next poem transitioned from love to the struggles of loving other people, which is also a topic that most everyone can relate to if he or she has ever had feelings for another. During this poem, she said a line that she went on to explain after she finished, which was "those who have no father love men differently." It was during this explanation that she chose to give a the audience a bit of her background, rather than at the very beginning of her set like the other artists. By speaking about her background and how that particular quote applied to her own life, she really made a connection with the audience because she was sharing something so personal. From there, she again transitioned from the hardships of love to the importance of self-respect and self-love, and the poem in which she communicated these to themes was pretty serious compared to the other poems. This last poem seemed to have a big impact on the audience, as it was dead-quiet save for Gina's voice, and as I looked around, there were many females in the audience who were tearing up. This particular poem hit home with a lot of the audience, myself included, and it seemed to have been directed at the female part of the audience. Gina's poems, as well as the poems of the other three poets, were highly biographical and were written "from the heart," as they liked to call it, so sharing basically their life experiences made them more credible and more relatable to the audience because they were willing to put themselves out there and make themselves vulnerable. The order in which she placed her poems was also appropriate; one would think that the order in which poems were performed would not really matter much, but the way in which she ordered hers had it so that the serious content level of each poem progressed. She started out with a very light-hearted, very lovey-dovey poem, and then got more serious with each poem, until the last poem had many people in tears. In between each poem and sips of water, she gave little anecdotes that related to the previous poem and in a way Had she started off with that last poem and made it first, it may have overwhelmed the audience and made them uncomfortable by forcing so much sadness and solemnness on them so soon in the presentation.
Slam poets seem to be professional public speakers with an edge, with a flair. It is just them on the stage, no visuals, no nothing. They use the sounds and tones of their voice to manipulate what they're saying and turn their words into something actually worth listening to. Gina's voice varied greatly in her volume, at times being soft and somewhat demure when covering more sensitive topics like love, and then raising her voice and sounding more assertive and almost aggressive when talking about topics like not allowing oneself to be taken advantage of. Because her poets are practiced and performed everywhere she goes, she pretty much had them down-packed and therefore did not need vocal fillers to fill her pauses. Her poise for the most part was assertive, with her legs apart so that she looked comfortable but not close enough that she started awkwardly swaying. Her enunciation was good for the most part; she often emphasized the words and phrases that she deemed important enough for everyone to clearly understand what she was saying. A problem that she had, as well as the other poets, was in the speed of her delivery. I understand that the flow and the rhythm of the poem is very important to the delivery, and that variation in speed is something to be appreciated, but there were some parts in which the poets were simply going way too quickly for anyone to even begin to comprehend what they were saying. It seemed like they were too focused on the "punchlines," or the most important parts of their speeches, that they ended up speeding through the parts that weren't as important or attention-grabbing. Eye contact may have been a problem, since Bovard is such a big venue, and the only light is on the stage; it may have been a challenge for Gina to really make eye contact with anyone since all the lights are on her and she can't really see anyone. I would have liked to think she may have locked eyes with me for a split second during her last poem. Overall, she did not seem nervous at all, because she's been working on this craft for so long. Even if she was nervous, it was something she could have effectively pushed into her delivery and performance. While what she said may not have necessarily been the secret for curing cancer, it was a way for us college students to find a way to cope with feelings that we may be experiencing for the first time in our lives, and the main objective of the series was that by bringing people from all over and having them share their stories through spoken word, it would encourage others to do the same.
I attended a public lecture by the US Ambassador to South Korea on Wednesday, February 23 at 4 p.m. It was held in the Club Room at the Davidson Conference Center where Ambassador Stephens talked about the U.S.-Korea relations, more specifically where we have been and where we were going. Professor David Kang who is the head of the Korean Studies Institute moderated the occasion in the beginning and end of the speech, especially during the Q&A portion that followed the speech. As Ambassador Stephens walked into the room, she brought in much presence with the way she held herself together and greeted the audience. She appeared very respectable yet approachable, and as she approached the podium, she poised herself quite comfortably, exuding an air of confidence and familiarity with giving speeches. She began her speech with a very familiar “ahn-young-ha-sae-yo,” the Korean greeting for “hello” which was received with much acclaim and attention by the crowd because the audience was primarily Korean. She spoke in a very enthusiastic tone as she started out giving a brief biography of how she got to where she is today. I thought her introduction was very appropriate and successful because she mentioned how she grew up in the West, constantly providing grounds for which members of the audience could relate to her since the audience, as residents of Los Angeles, all live in the West. Continuing with the listener links, she wove aspects of Korean history into her story about how she got involved and interested in Asia, which established a common ground with the audience in terms of cultural background. Wrapping up about her biography, she smoothly transitioned into the main points of her speech by saying, “But I’m not here to talk about myself. Let’s talk about U.S. relations with Korea,” which clearly identified where she was going. What I thought was very effective was that she was very straightforward and clear about her main points. She described that the most important aspects to US-Korea relations has been Secretary Clinton’s three legs: defense, diplomacy and development. This provided much structure for the rest of the speech because she was able to describe and focus on each aspect of the three legs in relation to the US and Korea.
Ambassador Stephens continued to another set of three points that she established for herself in describing the transformations that have taken place in Korea. These were economic transformations, political transformations, and increasingly global transformations that are taking over the mindset of Koreans. Laying out this three-pronged structure allowed the audience to easily follow along with her speech in an organized and non-confusing manner. All the while, she spoke with much familiarity about every topic, showing and constantly establishing her knowledge as well as credibility as an ambassador to Korea. She paced herself well and the volume of her speech contributed to her grand presence in the room. Transitioning onto the topic of where U.S. and Korea was headed, aspects of Ambassador Stephens’ delivery began to falter, beginning with eye contact. I think she began to realize that she was short on time, so she started pouring an information dump of sorts to the audience while describing the current events that have been shaping the relations between the countries. It became more and more apparent that she was glancing down at her paper, thus compromising the eye contact with the audience. This is when the speech became less engaging because she slightly lost touch with the audience’s attention span. Nevertheless, the content of her speech was very sound as she described, in a very complimenting tone, Korea’s responses to Haiti and North Korea bombings. She even incorporated a couple jokes about her Korean pronunciation of the word “Haiti” which bought back some of the attention she had lost. By using current events as supporting evidence of her optimistic view on U.S.-Korea relations, Ambassador Stephens was able to win more credibility from the audience because these were events that the audience was very familiar and interested in and thus could attest to themselves. She specifically focused in on the year 2011 and her opinions on how relations would be shaped. However, she once again began to read off her paper rather than talking to the audience, most likely due to the time constraints. Her speed also increased as if she was trying to cram a bunch of information into the audience. In her conclusion, she succinctly reviewed her points of where the two countries will be headed in 2011 by giving a quick summary of the North Korea situation, ratification of the Free Trade Agreement and the global community that is developing in South Korea. These three examples all tied back to her three-pronged argument about the political, economic and global transformations of Korea. As she wrapped up, she left the audience with a very optimistic and relatable last impression because she incorporated Korean vocabulary into her speech, once again providing means to connect with the audience on a more personal level. Overall, I thought her speech was very effective taking into consideration the time constraint, and ultimately, having an audience that was already very engaged in the topic of discussion played to her benefits as she was received in a very welcoming manner.
On Thursday, March 3rd at 7PM, I listened to a lecture by Dr. Patricia Rose on the importance of hip-hop culture. Dr. Patricia Rose formally spoke in front of the USC Black Student Assembly in partnership with the USC USG Program Speakers Board as a source of intellectual dialogue, creativity, and positivity for the members. Dr. Tricia Rose has written a few books about hip-hop and the social dynamics of the music genre, so it seemed like she was incredibly knowledgeable about the subject and knew her points very well. As soon as Rose began her speech, she exuded passion about the subject with powerful voice projection. She immediately captured the audience’s attention through a successful listener relevance link to the current state of hip-hop music, specifically, the types of music displayed on popular entertainment television stations like MTV and BET. What made Dr. Tricia Rose such a successful speaker was not just because of her clever metaphors and detailed stories throughout this lecture, but also her delivery. Rose maintained consistent eye contact with the audience throughout the entire event. She made sure to connect with every single person in the room at some point during her presentation, and was always very direct with her body movement and gestures. When emphasizing powerful statements like describing the mentality of hip-hop as the “gangster-pimp-hoe trinity” (Rose, Tricia, 2011, March 3), Rose utilized pauses for effect. In addition, the confidence of the tone and volume of her voice made Rose’s words twice as inspiring and strong. Her use of stories and facts allowed the audience to stay alert. She was never lax or dull in terms of providing further information on the hip-hop culture and her views on it. Those who attended the event through the assembly or just for academic extra credit had no choice but to be alert and somewhat attentive, because that’s what her presence and lecture commanded from us. Her gestures also helped get her main points across; she made use of her space by occasionally moving as she talked and used hand gestures whenever she talked about something she was passionate about. I think this is mainly why Dr. Tricia Rose’s speech captured so much attention; it’s a subject that she clearly shares a deep love for, and she ensures it comes out through her organization and delivery of the lecture.
I think what really made Dr. Tricia Rose’s lecture stand out was her ability to use metaphors and analogies to help paint vivid images in the listener’s head. For example, Rose compares hip-hop to a “whipping child for stereotypical ideals and ideologies” (Rose, Tricia, 2011, March 3). When discussing anything regarding race and culture, it is always crucial that the speaker is careful and conscious not to make generalized, insensitive statements. I think the reason why Rose was able to gracefully avoid this, was because of her supporting material. Although she may have not had a specific fact after every point, she was able to clearly articulate a deeper understanding of hip-hop’s role in creating damaging ideas on African Americans. As she verbally led the audience through the history of the genre, Rose used this background information to emphasize her main points about hip-hop as “a place to find all Black stereotypes,” (Rose, Tricia, 2011, March 3) despite it being one of the most important genres. From here, Rose transitioned into the structures of oppression she describes hip-hop as being responsible for helping to set up. This became a pattern for the rest of her speech; Rose would use various stories and examples to help her transition from one point to the next, and relate it back to what this means for hip-hop in general. Something that I really hope to take from Dr. Tricia Rose’s lecture is her ability to evoke pathos through her words and body language. I feel like the reason her speech was so moving on the audience was a combination of her thought-provoking discourse and ability to read the audience. Based off of how we reacted, Rose plotted out her points and delivery of these points very carefully. While I do not hope to emulate the same intensity on a speech about, for instance, the Easter bunny, I do want to try to emulate her same drive and passion that she exudes while speaking. Overall, Tricia Rose did a fantastic job on covering a topic that is not always covered with such comprehensive detail. Hopefully, I can take some of Rose’s same techniques and apply them to my own future public speaking opportunities.
Since I was observing a documentary, Professor Birman's attention grabber was simply showing the film and waiting for the audience's reaction from it. Showing the documentary alone was enough to spark conversation from his audience; this he knew and in this way his introduction was extremely effective. The question-and-answer conclusion session really helped recap the film and wrap it up and provide answers to the audience. The question and answer session began with the interviewer asking prominent questions she had from the film, then opened the floor for everybody else. The transitions came when the next question was answered. The conversation flowed really well. Being a professor at USC, the speaker was very effective in his vocal variety, rate, enunciation, volume, and poise; he used hand gestures a lot, which was appropriate since he was very passionate about what he was talking about, and it seemed to flow more like a normal conversation. (Likely because it was done from a documentary, and also we had a small intimate audience, over half of which was filled with his colleagues and students) so in this case his presentation was very appropriate. He clearly stated his purpose and feelings from the documentary. He was extremely credible since he was the one who made this documentary in the first place, and had the most experience from the situation. He seemed very ethical in handling the material and while the documentary was extremely controversial, he did not act angry about it but rather tried to make rationale from it. Since the documentary focused on a young girl tried as an adult in the court system from killing someone she thought was going to kill her when she was working as a prostitute at her house, there were a great deal of ethical responsibilities that were brought up, such as the US court and legal system and prostitution/drugs/child services in general. I learned so much from going to this seminar about how unfair the legal system can be especially in unfortunate situations, there are so many factors that go into it besides justice. I will try to be as relaxed as he was and feel confident about what I am speaking about.
For my speech observation, I watched Mayda Del Valle perform her slam poetry at the Words in your Face event at Bovard Auditorium. The event was a collection of national slam poet champions who come from minority backgrounds. The purpose of the event was to introduce or exhibit poetry as an art form to the students of USC as well as inform the receivers on the nature of the speaker’s heritage. Mayda Del Valle’s speaking technique relays this message often very strongly, and at other times, it is her strong, genuine, overpowering technique that can take away from the audience’s comprehension.
ReplyDeleteshe began with a very flashy entrance; she danced around, used silly voices, identified specific members of the audience and used her wit to establish a sense of lightheartedness and energy. She told an inside joke, which she excused away as an inside joke, and the obscurity of this moment fell flat on the audience, but overall she came on and caught attention very well. Before she started her first poem, she highlighted the subject, or topic, of the poem very well. She titled it “addicted” and told us very colloquially and genuinely about how it has to do with her past troubles relating with guys, told us a story about a guy she was dating who had matching sneakers with her, and how the relationship fell apart very quickly. After setting her premise and telling us in a sentence or so the nature of the main point, she continued with her first poem. The poem itself was manuscript, which is unfortunate, because holding the paper in her hand diminished her ability to make eye contact and gesture effectively. Despite this limitation, however, she delivered the poem very well. Using repetition of the mantra, “Fresh faded with jeans sagging in a b-boy stance with fat laces and I hope that he’s a sneaker addict” she left a concrete image in the mind of the audience of the kind of guy she dates. This image was repeated at the beginning of each new chapter of the poem, each chapter talking about a different guy in her past love life. Even at the extremely rapid pace and heavy rhythm of the poem (complimented with strong emphasis and fluency so as to remain audible) the audience was able to follow her story due to this repetition and clear organizational system. Nice use of ornamental phrasing such as “he was my hit song” and the aforementioned mantra allowed Mayda to execute her complex message and keep the listener relevance high.
ReplyDeleteListener relevance and comprehension became a potential issue for Mayda’s second poem. Much of the poem is in Spanish, and while the purpose of the evening is to genuinely exhibit the cultures of the performers, the change in language could cause an issue for non-Spanish speaking audience members. She corrected this problem by setting the tone with her intro, delivery and integration of English lyrics. The intro was solemn. She lowered her eye contact, pitch and volume in order to create a serious tone and to adjust the audience from the upbeat nature of the last poem. She introduced the poem’s topic: her grandmother. While she sang in Spanish for the first half of the poem, the Spanish was simple, repetitive, and highlighted by the flow of the music. When she moved to the English aspect of the poem, the repetition continued with the expression “How did you pray?” a question posed both to the rhetorical grandmother and to the audience in an effort to raise the controversy of this issue of identity and hardship on which the poem focuses. To juxtapose the body gestures of the first poem (upbeat, active, hip hop) she maintained a relative sense of stillness that juxtaposed and complimented the growing tension and rhythm with which she spoke. Overall, the juxtaposition between these two poems gave us a great feel of Mayda as both a speaker and a person.
ReplyDeleteProblems with her delivery often happened in between poems. She was quick to self-edit on stage, frequently blaming the speakers or her earrings for problems in the performance that would otherwise be overlooked. Her frustration was very weakly hidden with a following “just kidding.” It detracted heavily from her likability in my opinion. She also incorporated a lot of humor into her poems, but didn’t respond well to audience feedback. When the audience laughed at her jokes, they missed the next lines because she didn’t pause. Later in her performance, the audience didn’t laugh at her jokes so that they could hear the whole speech. The removal of audience participation weakened her message’s strength. Overall, she was a very strong, but not perfect public speaker, and while her message was wonderfully portrayed in her art form, she could use some practice in cooperating with her audience.
ReplyDeleteFor my speech observation I attended the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars conference on Public Diplomacy, Place Brands & Soft Power. The talk was entitled: Can You Have City Diplomacy Without Diplomats? A Challenge and Opportunity for City Branding delivered by Keith Dinnie, Director, Brand Horizons and Professor at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The conference was held on Friday, March 4th in the Forum of the Ronald Tutor Campus Center at 9am.
ReplyDeleteOverall I was impressed with the speech that Dr. Dinnie delivered. From the moment he started speaking he was able to hold the attention of the audience. His introduction was clear and he explicitly stated what issues he was going to be addressing. He linked the ideas to his recently released book on city branding, so to someone who was not very familiar with the topic of city and nation branding I knew he was a very credible speaker and was an expert in the emergent field of city branding. He also made a few jokes about Charlie Sheen during his introduction, which was a good way to get the audience comfortable around him. I enjoyed knowing he was an expert in his field, but was also making an effort to loosen up the crowd and get us comfortable before he launched into his talk. He spoke at a good pace and clearly enunciated his words, which was helpful because he did have an accent.
Because this was a conference presented by the Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars the audience mostly consisted of professionals in the field and students who were a part of this association. When I first saw the somewhat small crowd of about fifty people I was afraid that everything would be extremely specific and geared toward an expert in Public Diplomacy. I was involved in Model UN in high school, but by no means am I well-versed in current issues in city and nation branding. It was a relief that Dr. Dinnie gave a speech that was clear enough for someone like me who is not as familiar topic. He clearly defined what he was talking about. He explained that the concept of city branding is an emerging topic, so even the well-seasoned Public Diplomacy experts in attendance were learning new ideas, so he took his time explaining his views on the subject and providing many clear examples for each of the points he was introducing.
On February 20th at 3:00, the School of Cinematic Arts had a screening of “Green Guys” in the George Lucas Building, followed by a question and answer interview with the writer and director, Cole Mueller, and co-producer, Sean Meier. As a recent graduate of the School of Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California, Cole Mueller is an up and coming writer and producer. “Green Guys”, his first feature film, follows four con artists who create a Ponzi scheme through their counterfeit company that poses as an opportunity for high priced investment. The friends work together as a modern day “rat pack” to steal millions of dollars. It is not until they come under suspicion of the FBI that the men turn against each other, letting their greed get the best of them, and their conspiracy and lives to unravel.
ReplyDeleteThe screening of the movie was followed by a question and answer interview with Cole Mueller and Sean Meier, conducted by a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Although the speaking portion of this screening was in the form of a question and answer interview, the casualness of the situation did not result in a lack of organization that would normally be present in a speech. The professor began the interview by reading short bios about both men, which acted as a sort of introduction, initiating the remainder of the interview. I think that reading the bios of Mueller and Meier helped familiarize the audience with the director and co-producer. In addition, this introduction to the men and the movie sparked inspiration for audience questions and participation. The introduction was followed by a series of questions asked by both the USC cinematic arts professor as well as the audience. I think that the questions and answers that followed the introduction acted as the main points that would traditionally appear in a speech. Because this occasion was conducted in an interview style, the discussion between the two men and the audience was not followed by an official conclusion. Instead, the Q&A was ended with Mueller and Meier discussing upcoming projects they were working on, which, was successful in coming a full circle from their past work, “Green Guys”, to future work, was not fully captivating and did not leave me feel inspired.
ReplyDeleteOnce the movie ended and the director and co-producer came on stage to conduct an interview, I was caught off guard by their delivery and presence on stage. Although the situation did not call for extreme formality, I think that the men, specifically writer and director, Mueller was overly casual in his positioning and the way in which he presented himself by slouching in his chair with his legs up. In addition, the introduction and reading of the biographies, while great in thought, was not well prepared. The professor ended up reading their bios off a page and stumbling over his words, continuously messing up facts about their lives. What was meant as a nice gesture to welcome the guests, appeared to me to be more insulting. While Mueller clearly felt very at ease being on stage and talking, his co-producer, Meier was visibly uncomfortable. Mueller answered the majority of questions, but when Meier did respond it was often in a quiet tone and rushed pace. I think that although the relaxed and light-hearted feel of the interview was not offensive for the situation, I believe that the men should have been a little more professional in their appearance and delivery, if only for the purpose of gaining more respect within the movie industry. Although I felt that the majority of their delivery and non-verbal communication was not successful for the purpose of public speaking, I did think their conversational tone was something that I would like to incorporate into my own speeches.
ReplyDeleteI think that the content of what was discussed during the Q&A was very fulfilling, especially to those in attendance who are looking to become involved in movie writing, directing, and production. Although most of people in the audience had some involvement or knowledge of film production, Mueller and Meier did not alienate those in the audience, like myself, who lacked information about cinematic arts. For example, multiple questions directed towards the men involved the actual production of the movie calling for understanding of filming and editing techniques that were utilized. Mueller avoided jargon and technical terms as much as possible, and when necessary, made sure to define any terms. His elaboration when speaking of cinema jargon made his speaking more relatable to all audience members. In addition, Mueller and Meier used humor as a way to keep the audience captivated. They revealed funny stories that happened while on set and kept the audience entertained and alert. While the interview format of the occasion didn’t reveal any specific thesis statement or main points, I think that the questions that were asked followed, while varied, directed the dialogue well. Topics mainly covered in the Q&A included: the creation and writing of the script, the budget and financial aspects of the production of the film, the actors and individuals involved with the film, and the editing of the film. As someone completely unaware of film production, I enjoyed the question and answer as it allowed me to get an inside look into how a movie can come together to be the story that you see on screen.
ReplyDeleteI attended a speech at Ground Zero Café by Abe Lowenthal. The occasion was held by the USC student organization WMMW, which stands for What Matters to Me and Why. Therefore the speaker talks about what is important to him or her and why. In this case the topic was Latin America and United States relations because Abe Lowenthal is Professor at USC who teaches International Relations courses. The introduction was very effective; he shared personal information about his personal loves, such as, his kids, music, and mocha chip ice cream. The conclusion on the other hand was very bland, simply summing up his points and saying Thank You. The main points were fairly clear due to his transitions, which brought together ideas very smoothly. The order was effective because the most interesting information was in the beginning and the end. Also, the information was order in a sequential order, starting from the beginning of his experiences and research until present day.
ReplyDeleteHis delivery varied between good and bad during the speech; Professor Lowenthal used pauses effectively to create dramatic effect and separate thoughts. But he did not make eye contact with many people; he simply would skim the crown because the majority of the time he was reading his speech directly off his paper. A very obvious flaw was his monotone voice, with no use of tone it was hard to tell when there was something exciting for relevant he was referring to. He was not conversational for the most part, until the discussion period at the end when he was very conversational. I believe that he was conversational during the discussion session and not during the speech because he was too reliant on his outline during his speech. He was also able to make much more eye contact because he was not reading is speech off a piece of paper during the discussion session. An example would be Professor Lowenthal’s attempt at a joke during his speech. He made a claim that in today era ‘people want to learn less and expect less…except at USC of course.’ But he did not change tone or pause enough for the audience to process and react to the joke.
ReplyDeleteFor my speech observation, I went to see former pornographic star Derrick Burts speak at the Doheny Memorial Library on February 15 at 7pm. The event was organized by the USC’s Program Board Women’s Student Assembly, Queer and Ally Student Assembly and Student Affair’s LGBT Resource Center specifically for USC’s Sex Week. Sex week is where issues about safe sex, HIV/AIDS prevention, STD prevention, as well as a lot of related gender and relationship issues are discussed with students to increase awareness and prevent future problems. The talk I went to was called “HIV and the Porn Industry: An Evening with Derrick Burts.”
ReplyDeleteThe room in Doheny Library that was used for this event was actually big for the number of people that showed up. Around 15 people were present for the event. The organizers were probably expecting more people to come especially since the speaker and the topic that he is speaking about is very controversial. His purpose of speaking to students is to inform them about the obvious dangers (health-wise) of the adult industry. He expressed his desire to talk to college students about this issue because college students who are in debt or who are in great need of money are attracted by the industry’s good pay especially because the “job” seems “easy”. Derrick Burts came in the room looking like a typical college student. I would have never thought that he was the speaker had the host not introduced him. He was just wearing a plain black shirt and jeans. If he were to wear his outfit then to a different event and occasion, the audience might think of him as not credible. However, his look complemented the occasion and his topic.
His speaker credibility was established when he stated that he had HIV himself. He was diagnosed just late last year after testing every month for all types of sexually transmitted diseases. One clear message came through: HIV can happen to absolutely anyone. Burts first introduced himself before telling the story on how he contracted the HIV. He maintained good eye contact with the audience from the moment he got up the podium. Although he appeared to be just like a regular guy, his tone of voice clearly exhibited the seriousness of the issue that he is talking about. He wasn’t monotone at all because his tone and facial expressions would match the sentiments of his points as of the moment. When he talked about why he had entered the porn industry, he looked and sounded regretful. When he told us the story of how he contracted the HIV, he seemed forlorn. When he introduced his girlfriend that was sitting with the audience who keeps on supporting him and never left his side, he looked at her so happily that gave us the impression of him being so grateful for her.
The rate at which Burts spoke also varied. He spoke a little bit faster than normal when he was telling us an exciting story about his “dream trip” to Niagara Falls. He spoke more firmly and slower when he expressed his anger towards the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare (AIM) when they stopped responding to him after he got diagnosed with HIV. His choices of words when it came to talking about the adult industry were sometimes vulgar but I think he was just describing the mere truth. In regards to his fluency, overall he was pretty consistent all throughout the speech. He took effective pauses when needed. Yet, I still think that he could use more practice for his future speeches or conferences because he sometimes paused quickly in the middle of his sentences to think about what he was going to say next. He didn’t move or walk around during the entire time that he was speaking and just stood firmly behind the podium. He was also making hand gestures that were appropriate for his current point at that time.
ReplyDeleteBurts also made use of video clips in his speech presentation. It definitely helped the audience grasp the intensity of the situation when he showed us what the adult industry were claiming about him. It is really unfortunate for Derrick Burts to have to go through such a sad experience when all he just wanted was to make a decent living. His speech presentation was definitely emotional in spite of showing anger towards the adult industry and firmness about what he is now advocating for: mandatory condom usage in the adult industry and condom usage for everyone in their personal live as well. Altogether, I thought that Derrick Burts’ speech presentation was effective. Given the fact that it was his first major speech presentation outside of his typical press conferences and media interviews, he did a pretty good job. I’m sure he’ll get more practice and be a much more better speaker in the future now that he is starting to actively share his story and advocate to students and everyone else.
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ReplyDeleteFor my speech observation, I went to see the screening of "Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story" with Dan Birman in the Annenberg Auditorium. The documentary itself was not very long, no more than an hour. Cyntoia's story was extremely hard to watch, but the documentary itself was really well-done and really captured what the message of the documentary was about. Cyntoia grew up in an extremely hard upbringing, and was tried unfairly in court. It was really interesting listening to Dan Birman answer questions after the documentary about the film, since it created so much controversy and buzz from the audience. Everybody was really surprised by the end of the documentary, and everyone wanted to know why it ended up the way it did. I really enjoyed hearing Birman's perspective from behind the scenes making the documentary, and the interviewer asked really great, specific questions. She really knew what she wanted to ask and answered a lot of the audience's questions before they even had to ask them. After her interview with Professor Birman, the audience had the opportunity for open-ended questions where they could ask anything they wanted. Professor Birman spoke really slowly and carefully, with clear diction and made good eye contact with the audience members. He spoke a lot with is hands, using gestures. He kept a steady pitch and spoke loud enough so everyone could hear him. During the question and answer session, people raised some really good points, and everybody got into a long question-and-answer session about the United States court system. Everybody was moved by the documentary, and overall I think Professor Birman did a great job. I enjoyed attending this, even though the film made me a little shaken up. It was really eye-opening and showed how much crime there really is in America.
ReplyDeleteOn March 2nd, Professor Abe Lowenthal, from the USC School of International Relations, gave a speech titled, what matters to me and why. The speech took place around noon at ground Zero and was no longer than forty-five minutes long. Professor Lowenthal studies policy issues in U.S.-Latin American relations and shared to us why this subject was important to him and how we can improve our relationships.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Lowenthal wore a suit and tie to his speech, which showed he was serious and professional. Right from the start, he grabbed the audiences’ attention and discussed what mattered to him and why. He created a link to the audience by naming out what gives him pleasure and pain and what matters to him. He named things like sunsets in Santa Monica, walks on the coast and the importance of his family in his life, which showed that he is just like us. After talking about what matters to him and why, Lowenthal went straight into his transition without any kind of preview of his main points. His transition was clear and established what he would speak about next. He said, “now I will turn to academics.” Although the transition made it clear that the first main point was academics, his sub-points were not clear at all. He would discuss U.S. foreign policy, then talk about his experiences in Latin America, then discuss policies again, and the his opinions on U.S. Latin American relations. This made it extremely unclear what his points were that he wanted to get across. The positive from his first main point was his audience linkage. For example, he did not just list facts about Latin America and its turmoil, but talked about his experiences adapting to a foreign country like Peru. Through talking about his experiences in Peru, the audience was able relate to his tribulations adapting to something foreign. Also, when discussing his opinion on Latin American relations with the U.S., he would discuss how we as citizens should form better policy debates. He was relating information to us and showing us what we can do to help form policies toward better relations. Although the message of his first main point was scattered, he did manage to link the audience to the issues that matter to him.
The transition into the next main point was straightforward. His transition was “now we can talk about the final questions of why, for this purpose I’ll define my sources and passion for working and why.” His second main point was much more organized than his first main point. He spoke about how his family has influenced him and how his orientation was shaped by his parents. Then as the second sub-point, he spoke about his personal stories and how they have shaped him. He linked the audience by showing us what impacted and influenced him throughout his childhood. After he shared his stories about what influenced him in his childhood, I felt more of a connection to him as a speaker because I as well have been influenced and shaped by experiences from my childhood. For his conclusion, he did not wrap anything up, but just thanked us for coming and thanked the series for letting him articulate what he has experienced and lived everyday. It would have been helpful for him to go over his main points in his conclusion and what he wanted us to take away from his speech. I was looking forward to a conclusion to wrap the speech up because I was still unclear about what he wanted us to take away from the speech. I understood that our relations with Latin America were important to him and his family, but he never made the point of the speech clear. What I understood from the speech was that his family and life experiences has shaped him and that he is a proponent of improved relations with Latin-American. The speech was disorganized and hard to follow. The only parts of the speech that stood out to me was the audience linkage like sunsets in Santa Monica, walks on the coast, or childhood stories.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Lowenthal is a professor in international relations and served as a U.S. ambassador in Latin America. His background made him credible and competent to speak about U.S.-Latin America foreign relation, but his delivery made me so uninterested. He spoke at an extremely slow pace with a monotone voice. There was no vocal variety throughout his entire speech. It was hard to critique his stance and volume because he was hiding behind a podium with a microphone. He never once made a hand gesture, only to turn the page of his notes. He read most of his lecture of his notes and would constantly look up at the audience and then down at his notes. When he looked out at his audience, he never made steady eye contact with someone, but would look right for a couple seconds, the look out at the audience on the left side for a couple seconds. Lowenthal never used verbal pauses, but did pause frequently, when finishing a story. These pauses did not enhance the speech, but make it longer and more drawn out. His speech reminded me of an old professor giving a lecture to a class that he has given for his one-hundredth time. Although his speech was unorganized and the underlining message was unclear, he did speak about the assigned topic, what matters to him and why. Even if he answered the question of his assigned topic to speak about, he failed completely in his delivery and ability to be an effective public speaker.
On Wednesday, March 2nd, I attended a speech by Professor Steve Lamy, as a part of the speaker series, “Who Do You Want to Be?,” held at the University Religious Center. He was chosen for this series to share his life experiences, both personal and professional, and help his audience members think about their future paths. Conversational and relaxed, Professor Lamy highlighted moments in his life story with a plethora of personal stories and inspirational ideas, engaging his audience through delivery techniques such as vocal variety and fluidity.
ReplyDeleteAlthough appearing calm and sitting down, Professor Lamy introduced his speech in an unexpected way; he acknowledged his own discomfort with the occasion. He claimed that coming from a Scott-Irish family, he was taught never to talk about himself (Lamy, 2011). So, he felt uncomfortable speaking about his life, as if he was interesting or important. This uncommon introduction established humility and vulnerability, and set a more conversational tone for his speech, rather than a formal, didactic one. Using a personal story, he was further able to create a listener relevance link, describing how he recently was turned down from a job as a university president for apparently being “too high energy” and “too USC” (2011). This clever reference to USC effectively established a common context and connection amongst audience members, making his speech more relevant. Subtly, he then weaved in his thesis, that “life is a zig zag, not a straight line,” and you “don’t know where you might end up” (Lamy, 2011).
Maintaining a conversational flow, Professor Lamy logically organized his speech in a time sequence pattern. However, his main points and supporting material blurred together because his entire speech was composed of personal stories. It was difficult to distinguish whether a personal narrative was a main point or a supporting example of some larger theme. His speech could seem like one long conversational narrative. Nevertheless, Professor Lamy was able to establish clarity and a sense of structure through his use of transitions and signposts, such as “the other thing that happened,” “then the draft comes,” “and so I went on the job market” (2011). Especially helpful was his use of internal reviews, for instance, when he said, “remember how I wanted to be a professional lacrosse player, well now I wanted to try out the military thing” (Lamy, 2011). Before we got lost in all of his stories, he was sure to every so often re-situate the context with phrases like “now I am a sophomore,” (Lamy, 2011) to remind us how much time has passed. Keeping a common thread throughout, he repeated the “life is a zig zag” theme, when describing how he unexpectedly met an important person or had to make a difficult choice.
To enhance and illustrate his stories, Professor Lamy utilized various delivery techniques. Sitting down in his chair and oftentimes without perfect posture would seemingly detract from his credibility, but it actually created a more casual atmosphere and suited his storytelling tone. Although he maintained a consistently moderate volume, he clearly raised his voice when he was excited. Along with volume and pitch variation, he widened his eyes, sat up straighter, and used hand gestures when telling stories about his youthful days as student, such as his recollection of secretly reading books during his library job and coordinating music concerts for his college radio station (Lamy, 2011). In particular, he was effective in using his hand movements when delineating the different life choices he had to make, physically pointing out the various alternatives. I also picked up on his manipulation of rates and pauses. Although he did have some vocal fillers such as “so” and “you know,” I did not mind because it made him sound natural and trustworthy. Whenever he had something important to say, he would slow down, lower his voice, and add silence in between. By changing his rate from its usual pace, he made certain lines more memorable for me, such as “strive to do well, but make a difference in the lives of others” (Lamy, 2011). In addition, he sometimes switched from declarative sentences and asked present-tense questions like “what should I do?” leaving a pause afterward so the audience could imagine the difficulty of his dilemma as well. Throughout his speech, he spoke with conversational fluidity and maintained eye contact with everybody in the room, letting his audience just sit back and enjoy his conversation.
ReplyDeleteAs the lecture series was called, “Who Do You Want to Be?,” Professor Lamy clearly needed to prepare in advance, sift through all of his memories, and choose the best ones to illustrate his life story. But sometimes, he confusingly kept naming different people, and it was difficult to keep track of all them. His name-dropping was almost like using a statistic that sounds important, but does not truly mean anything to the audience. Nevertheless, I felt his stories were entertaining and effective, as he provided a variety of moods, some humorous and others inspirational. For example, he told the ironic story about applying for the position at USC, which he claims stands for “University of Second Choice,” as he was only offered the job once another person turned it down. He inserted various quotations, like “hope has two beautiful sisters, anger and courage,” and he brought in a hard copy of the book, The Life You Can Save (Lamy, 2011). He concluded his speech with a simple message, his larger life goal; he just wants the chance to make a difference.
With a conversational fluidity throughout his speech, Professor Lamy was a great story-teller. Like the lecture series is designed to do, he helped reassure his audience members that life can go in different directions, as he never imagined being an academic. After he concluded his speech, people were enthusiastic about asking him questions and for advice. I hope that I can learn not only from his experienced delivery style of fluidity and vocal variety, but also remember his message.
Lamy, S. (2011, March 2). Who do you want to be?. University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
For this assignment, I decided to go listen to Abe Lowenthal give an informative speech about the relations between the United States and Latin America. This event, hosted by WMMW (What Matters to Me and Why), took place around 12:00pm and was located at Ground Zero. For those of you who have never been to Ground Zero, it is a really neat coffee shop located right on campus. It has a coffee bar in the front, a large seating area with couches and chairs and then a stage in the back of the room. To me, Ground Zero seemed like a perfect place to give a speech. The atmosphere was very relaxed and the room could easily be arranged so that the speaker could view the entire audience.
ReplyDeleteAfter being introduced, Abe Lowenthal came on stage and opened his speech with “What Matters to Me and Why”, a perfect introduction considering that was the name of the organization who hosted the event. Personally, this was my favorite part of his speech. Not only did he gain the attention of the audience, he was able to bring the listener relevance concept into play. He shared his passion for his friends, family, vacations, walks in Santa Monica, and even ice cream, something I knew everyone could relate to. This part of the speech seemed very natural and free flowing, but once he was done talking about his personal life, his speech went down hill. It had nothing to do with the structure of his speech, his transitions from point to point were very clear. For instance, “now I will talk to you about why it’s important”, but it was the way he presented it that had me half asleep.
Abe stood behind a podium the entire time and had his speech written out and was just reading what lay in front of him. He was constantly staring down at his paper, and rarely made eye contact with the audience. It’s quite obvious that he didn’t take notice in whom the majority of the audience was because if he had, he would have realized that if it was boring USC college students, it was certainly boring the local high school class that was attending it. Abe should have realized he was losing the audiences attention and changed the tone of his voice. Through out the speech he had kept the same volume and it became very mono toned. He would use pauses a appropriate times, but would never change his voice so the audience never knew the importance of the statement.
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ReplyDeleteAbe had fifty minutes to give a speech informing the audience about the relations between United States and Latin America, and explain why it was important. For someone knowing nothing about the topic, me, I listened to about twenty-five minutes of him speaking about something I still know nothing about and thirty- five minutes worth of questions. As I had previously said, he made a connection with the audience, his speech had nothing to do with the listener relevance. Maybe it was an attention grabber, but if that were the case, he never informed the audience what he would be talking about. The thesis was either very unclear, or his conclusion didn’t match up. I agree that questions at the end of a speech are great to clearly what you said in your speech, but Abe used majority of his time having people asking questions. It could be possible that since this was such a short speech, it wasn’t meant for an audience member like myself. It seemed like a fifty-minute question and answer with your teacher, not an informative speech.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion, as Abe was nearly booted off stage because his time was up and they had another event after his, I looked back at the high school kids and noticed they took had the same puzzled look on their face, wondering “ what just happened”. In my opinion is Abe knew he would be reading off his speech, he should have brought in a visual. That way he could engage with the audience and or have something for the audience to look at while he read his speech. I also believe next time he should be aware of who exactly his audience is going to be so he can prepare appropriately. For someone like myself I didn’t really understand the information he was giving and it being presented in a monotone certainly didn’t make me eager to pay extra attention. Overall, the structure of his speech was well thought, but Abe Lowenthal’s ability to public speak was horrible.
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ReplyDeleteOn Thursday March 3, 2011 at 6:30pm I attended the Words in your Face: Poetry, Performance, and Politics presentation sponsored by the USC Visions and Voices program. Four poets spoke; Mayda Del Valle, Rudy Francisco, Gina Loring, and Shihan. I particularly will focus on Rudy Francisco’s presentation. Rudy Francisco is a host of a large poetry venue in San Diego, the 2007 San Diego Grand slam champion, and the 2009 National Underground Poetry Slam champion. The theme of the night was not only to introduce poetry and spoken word to a new audience at USC, but also to display strong messages of politics, truth and love. Rudy Francisco did exactly this. Francisco began his presentation by both creating speaker credibility while also relating to the audience in a relevant link. He began by speaking about his experience in spoken word, and how he began at the age of fourteen writing poems and performing locally. His first poem of the presentation could in whole be seen as an audience relevance link. He stated he wasn’t a love poet, but if he were to be one he would have written this poem. Love, a relatable and universal theme, connected with audience members alone but then his addition of humor and a somewhat funny spin when he stated the poem title “Beautiful girl who works at the Starbucks on 30th street promenade I swear I am not a stalker” ignited the audiences interest. Laughter and cheers were quickly heard in the audience even before he had fully begun his presentation. His introduction was extremely strong in that it was engaging and prepared listeners for what was coming next. The poem soon began and the strength of Francisco’s delivery was quickly seen. His volume, rate, and vocal variety were his strongest points. Francisco commanded the attention of an auditorium that was not to soft or to loud. Spoken word has a swift pace that sometimes makes it difficult to catch every word but he spoke with strong enunciation and pronounced every word, which had the audience clear as to the message he was attempting to portray. The message of his love and desire was also seen in his pauses. He paused for effect and allowed the audience to react. Some of his lines were humorous and he used pause for effect to deliver the punch line. Others were more emotional and dramatic and pauses and effect built anticipation in the audience. Specifically he stated, “I love you the same way I learned how to ride a bike, (pause) scared.” The audience laughed and found humor and a connection with the fear of falling in love that is universal.
ReplyDeleteThe mode of communication used by Francisco was memorized which was effective in that he did need to know every single line for the flow and he was very effective without the use of manuscript or note cards, which would of been distracting. His memorization did however limit his eye contact with the audience. He was more focused on getting out every word and making sure he did it correctly that he rarely even scanned the audience let alone made eye contact with each individual.
Following, the “love poem” Francisco quickly and abruptly transitioned into a more serious poem about bigotry in the Church. To transition to such a strong topic should have been handled with care but rather he rushed into the next poetry piece. The second poem’s introduction however was different from his first poem’s introduction but still extremely successful. Just like we are instructed in class and in our textbook to open with a story as a positive icebreaker, Francisco began with a story as to how he created this particular poem. The story did change the mood, as it was far more serious than his love poem. Francisco had previously seen an extremely offensive sign from a hateful Church member speaking about God’s hatred for homosexuality. He found injustice in this so continued into a poem about the difference between the God that the church member prays to and his God. He described numerous characteristics of the offensive man’s God that would be stereotypical of the man he saw. He was subtly and intentionally stating the man he himself thought of himself as a God in his self-righteous statements. A powerful line from the speech was I bet your God “has a swastika inside his throat and racial slurs tattooed to his tongue just to make intolerance more comfortable in his mouth.” The use of analogies and metaphors in his speech strengthened the image and the audience could picture the intolerant man he was describing. Francisco also balanced his tone and included inflection in areas of upset, disgust, anger and even sadness. It was almost like he had just seen this man on the street and had the initial adrenaline running and was filled with repulse and loathing. This poem was extremely powerful and had the audience feeling the emotion of every line. Francisco’s ability to ignite and engage an audience are his strongest points. His transitions however were somewhat weak and the speech did not flow from one area to the next but was rather choppy snippets of poems that were unrelated. I enjoyed the presentation very much and found the words of Rudy Francisco innovative and inspiring. The art form of spoken word was greatly displayed by Francisco’s performance. Although the whole presentation was left vague for the poets to have no guidelines and perform as they pleased, Francisco’s overall point was vague, as one poem did not connect to another like some of the artists did. I however would love to here Francisco speak again as he is a wonderful spoken word artist, and public speaker.
ReplyDeleteFor my audience analysis, I went to go see “Work It!”, a conference on gender, race, and sexuality in pop music professions on February 24th. The conference was held at the Forum that is located on the fourth floor of the Campus Center. The conference is an annual event that takes place throughout the entire day. The part of the conference that I attended was a panel discussion about the interventions, feminism/queer/of color scholars make in contemporary music and culture. Karen Tongson moderated the panel discussion and the panel speakers included (in order of introductions) Jack Halberstam, Jayna Brown, Daphne Brooks, Gayle Wald, Tavia Nyong’o, and Christine Bacareza Balance.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the discussion, Karen, the moderator, did gain the attention of the audience, however this was done almost by brute force. It was not conversational; rather, Ms. Tongson simply announced that the panel was about to begin, however, what made her effective in gaining the audience’s attention was the projection of her voice.
Ms. Tongson, demonstrated some of the tenets of delivery. For example, she enunciated her words, her projection was just right so as to fill the room but not sound as if she were yelling. In addition, she did not speak into the microphone so as to focus on one specific point, but rather projected and the microphone picked up her voice and helped it carry it across the room. I believe this demonstrated that Ms. Tongson had a great command of the microphone. Furthermore, she said had very little vocal fillers and her poise was not powerful yet present, and if helped that she had a podium so that the audience could concentrate their attention to her
However, in what she lacked vocal fillers and pauses, she made up for in fast rate. It seemed as if she was in a hurry because she sped through her introductions of the panel speakers where there were little to no pauses, and she made her sentences and phrases quick. In addition, Ms. Tongson never took her eyes off of her paper that was detrimental for the relationship between the audience and her as a moderator.
ReplyDeleteThe content was interesting, especially during introductions. After the moderator gave an introduction of a guest speaker, that guest speaker would then give a synopsis about their background and what their point of view or area of study brought to the table on the subject discussed. In essence, though these synopsis, which were not brief, each panel speaker used it as a chance to build speaker credibility and insert a listener relevance link to make their presence and point of view stronger. For example, Gayle Wald, in her synopsis, started out with a small joke that got the audience chuckling, this achieved getting the attention of the audience. Ms. Wald then established her academic credibility by listing her degrees and her mentioning her current position as an English professor at George Washington University. At that point Ms. Wald delve into details that made her relevant to the audience and the topic at hand through her mentioning personal details such as how she has a history of writing about music and the book that she published. More importantly Wald mentioned what she is interested and what she hoped to get out of the discussion. All of which enabled her to build as solid speaker credibility.
The panel speakers did not appear anxious at all, if anything the moderator appeared anxious, but not because she was nervous to speak in front of an audience, but rather because she was in a hurry to get every guest speaker introduced, regardless, it came off as anxious and it impeded her relationship with the audience.
ReplyDeleteI’m particularly fond of panel discussions because they are very conversational and the attention is spread among the speakers and the moderator thus relieving some of the tension. However, one must still build solid speaker credibility even when speaking at panel discussion. Even as a panel speaker, one must be able to communicate a message across effectively by employing most, if not all, the tenets of speech delivery. There is a difference between being introduced and announced as an expert versus convincing people of one’s level of expertise.
On Thursday, February 17, 2011 I attended the Annenberg Innovation Lab Entrepreneurship Workshop called “The Secrets of Start-Up Funding” which was located in the Rosen Family Screening Theatre of the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
ReplyDeleteThe workshop had three parts. During the first part we heard a five minute introduction from each of our experienced investor panelists including Bob Adholt the Vice Chairman of the Pasadena Angels investment firm, Ed Donnelly the Founder and President of Aderra a music technology company, and Robert McCormack an IT executive with over 25 years of experience. The second portion of the workshop was a question and answer session about the topic with the panelists, and the final portion of the workshop involved two fund-seeking presentations by USC student entrepreneurs. I will focus my analysis on the panelist presentations by Bob Adholt and one of the student presentations.
On the other hand, the investment seeking presentation by student entrepreneurs, Andy Uehara and Edmond Yee, was a great illustration of what not to do during a speech. The student entrepreneurs had to present a mock funding request, which they had to deliver before the three investment expert panelists as well as the entire workshop audience. They later revealed that they only had one day notice to prepare for the presentation which could explain why their presentation was so ineffective. Although Andy and Edmond correctly addressed most of the “11 topics” suggested by Mr. Adholt in their presentation, their inability to coherently and concisely deliver their material was the reason for their speech's ineffectiveness. First, the student entrepreneurs used the online presentation application and storytelling tool called Prezi. I think that using this new platform as their visual aid instead of a typical PowerPoint slideshow really harmed them. Andy did the talking while Edmond controlled the Prezi presentation which requires users to zoom in and out of a visual map in order to go from one area of content to another since Prezi allows users to make non-linear presentations. It was apparent that Edmond did not know to use the software because he kept zooming in and out (synonymous for going to the wrong slide) at inappropriate times and Andy had to fix the presentation before the live audience several times. Since this happened early on in the presentation it made the student speakers seem unprofessional and not credible early on in their presentation.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally at one point the students showcased the product they invented called CombiForm which is a new gaming platform that allows players to physically interlock their controllers and therefore to experience video games in a collaborative manner in real life as well as on screen. However, their attempt failed because the controllers would not work with the screen provided in the presentation room. As a last resort the student entrepreneurs tried to show audience members videos of how the game platform works which they included in their presentation in case the live showcase did not work. Nonetheless, the videos also did not work. The use of malfunctioning visual aids really harmed their presentation and made it difficult for audience members and panelists to take the student entrepreneurs seriously. Furthermore, it was difficult to pay attention to the content of the presentation (which was actually well thought out) since the visual aids were deterring our attention. Ultimately, these malfunctions also had a negative effect on Andy, the presenter, because it made him nervous and as a result he lost his poise, talked faster, miss enunciated words, and lost eye contact with the audience. The student presentation was the opposite of the panel presentation. It was not conversational at all and used ineffective visual aids that also detracted from the presentation's credibility and professionalism.
Adholt, B. (2011, February). The secrets of start-up funding. Speech presented at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
Uehara, A., & Yee, E. (2011, February). CombiForm. Prezi presentation presented at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
On March 2, 2011, I attended a speaker series entitled “Who Do You Want to Be?” at the University Religious Center at 6:00pm. In this series, USC Professors speak about the evolution of their lives and how they came to realize and reach their careers. For this occasion, Professor Steven Lamy, who is a professor of International Relations and the Vice Dean of USC ‘s College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, spoke to an audience of about 20 people, including myself, about his life journey through academia.
ReplyDeleteBefore discussing the delivery of Professor Lamy’s speech, I will first examine the content of his speech. The introduction, in my opinion, did a solid job at both igniting a sense of interest among the audience as well as introducing his life story. As he began, he stated, “I must admit, this is uncomfortable for me.” In stating that he was uncomfortable speaking, there was a general sense of confusion, as he is a recognized Professor at USC. Thus, we all were eager to hear more about why he felt uncomfortable and what he had to say. He continued to say that he grew up in a family where he was not only raised to not talk about himself, but also in a family where academics and reading were never emphasized. With this ironic statement, Professor Lamy made his thesis that “life is a zig-zag, not a straight line”, and he continued explaining his life journey.
Due to the nature of this speaker series, the majority of Professor Lamy’s speech was personal accounts of how he got to be at USC. Thus, because he was describing a different generation (1960’s-80’s) it was hard to relate or find interest in what he was saying. Nonetheless there were many moments where Professor could have easily compared his experience in college to ours in USC, in an attempt to establish some form of listener relevance, however, he failed to do so. He only relied on the given that as undergraduate students, we are already naturally interested in guidance for the future, and therefore rejected opportunities to connect our present to his past. This completely deterred what could have been an interesting discussion into a random lecture of his life.
Nonetheless, he did insert random advice through his story. In discussing his relationship with his Political Science professor in college, Professor Lamy stopped himself abruptly to note the importance of having mentors in life. The same thing happened when Professor Lamy was discussing a crossroads in his life, where he had to choose between two professions. He stopped himself again and advised us all to “work to give back to people” and to “work as if people matter.” At the end of his speech, Professor Lamy concluded with the same advice in an attempt to inspire us. He stated, “Do you want your work to make an impact in society? You have the chance to make a difference in the world.” While this advice is appreciated, such advice is not unique. USC students on a daily basis hear from professors and advisors the power of the USC Family and how networking and creating relationships is essential for success. In addition, in almost every single one of my classes, I’ve heard my professors say that with the rise of technology and media, we are the generation to shape the future and to bring good to the world. Not to say that these statements are not profound or inspirational, but Professor Lamy did not offer any meaningful or poignant advice that could personally be related to our lives, thus further diminishing a real bond between him as the speaker and the audience. In addition, he brought in a book called The Life You Can Save by Peter Zinger, that he advised us all to read, however he did not explain how it would help us individually; he only noted how it helped him see life more clearly, further creating a barrier between speaker and audience.
ReplyDeleteOne thing Professor Lamy did well was relating his speech back to his thesis. When describing specific events, he often referred to them as “zigs” or “zags”, which helped me, as an audience member remember the overall point of his speech that life is not a “straight line.”
While Professor Lamy offered some general advice to the audience about building a life outside of college, I believe the potential power and influence his speech could have had was very much suppressed by his lack of delivery skills. First and foremost, Professor Lamy was sitting down throughout the whole speech. He was reclined in his chair, with his legs cross, with his face often resting in his hands, expressing an almost apathetic sentiment. Perhaps he was trying to create a comfortable and casual setting, however, given the seriousness students feel when presented with issues of the future, I don’t think such an unconcerned expression was appropriate. In addition, Professor Lamy did not vary his tone throughout the speech. While he did offer certain notes of emphasis to express important moments of his life, I found the majority of his speech quite bland, which in turn, negatively affected my reception of his speech. I tended to start to not care about what he was saying because it appeared to me that he was not enthused about the issue at hand. For instance, when he would address the audience with a piece of advice, he often uttered his words in a low pitch; there was no sense of declaration or assertiveness that is so needed when creating an air of inspiration or hope. In addition, Professor Lamy tended to only make eye contact with one part of the room, ceasing to ever make eye contact with me in particular. This further inhibited any connection that could have come from his speech. I will say, however, that the rate of Professor Lamy’s speech as well as his enunciation of words allowed for his speech to be understandable and clearly followed. Professor Lamy appeared to be quite confident in his speech, never expressing any anxiety. His story and points were made clearly and without hesitation or qualms. While such aspects were appreciated, I believe that since recalling personal stories are so natural and a comfortable topic to every individual, such confidence, and thus easy rate and clear enunciation are expected; I feel that it is only when one is speaking on something foreign or on something that needed much planning and research where people become nervous, and thus speak quickly and unclearly.
ReplyDeleteTo correct Professor Lamy’s flaws, I think he would have really benefitted from using a detailed outline, which he did not use, that not only organized his life story, but also key, relevant points that can be taken away from his story. He should have somehow found much more relevance with the audience and our generation, rather than relying on the fact that we are unsure about the future. He could have incorporated information about current USC or Los Angeles programs for students, interacted with the audience to gain more knowledge about our interests, or talk to the organizer of the speaker series, who through RSVPs, had insight into who exactly was attending the event. In addition, he should have worked on his delivery skills, especially his intonation, so as to create a sense of emotion and overall hope that is so needed with this issue of the future.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I was disappointed with Professor Lamy’s speech. As an undergraduate student, the issue of the future is always in the back of my mind, so I was eager to hear advice from a faculty member. However, his lack of charisma and his overall lack of listener relevance did not leave me feeling hopeful or inspired as the speaker series is supposed to do. Thus, I realized the significance of listener relevance, and I now see how vital it is to incorporate this link within a speech. In addition, I learned how important delivery is, and how just one’s stance can affect audience perception. I will definitely try to avoid his tactics at delivery, and focus on trying to make my appearance seem more enthused and concerned about the audience, rather than a bland conversational-style speech.
I attended a speech called North Korea 101 by David Kang at USC. David Kang is a professor at USC and also the director of the Korean Studies Institute. It was hosted by an on-campus organization called Liberty in North Korea. The event was at Taper Hall around 5:30pm on February 28. The turnout of the event was relatively low, especially given the size of the room, and therefore, the speech was more casual. He still dressed formal and carried himself as such, but because of the size of the audience, Professor Kang was able to be very conversational with his speech. He spoke about current situation with North Korea and South Korea, and described it as another cold war. During his speech, he asked questions and really took advantage of the audience's feedback and made the whole experience interactive. He also included stories in his speech, which I think the audience left remembering. For example, his grandfather lived in North Korea, and when David Kang was a child, his grandfather would tell stories to him about how the kids played by the ocean with wooden poles and a wooden board. And surprisingly, David Kang found a picture taken recently of the new generation kids in North Korea still playing by the ocean exactly as his grandfather had explained to him. He used this story to point out that nothing has changed in North Korea because the country is so contained and that the government has control over foreign influences entering the country. After his speech ended, his Q&A was equally informative. Because there were few people, the audience and David Kang were able to build off of previous questions and go deeper into different related topics regarding North Korea. For example, David Kang discussed different theories of possible reunification between North and South Korea and its consequences. I thought his speech was effective and memorable because he spoke on such a conversational level. He had no notes during his speech, because the topic was something he researches out of love and passion. At the end of the Q&A, the staff of Liberty in North Korea thanked him for coming, and gave him a LiNK T-shirt as a token of appreciation.
ReplyDeleteOn Thursday, March 3, I went to Bovard Auditorium to watch Words in your Face: Poetry, Performance, and Politics as part of USC's Vision and Voices Speaker Series. The series was designed for multiple slam poets to come and showcase their talents to the audience and communicate their various messages, which included love, forgiveness, and self-respect. The poets featured in this performance were Mayda Del Valle, Rudy Francisco, Gina Loring, and Shihan. All poets have earned some sort of major, mostly nationally-recognized accolade for their work in the poetry field, so it was not like USC was bringing in some random poets who may or may not have had a lot of experience speaking, much less be nationally or internationally recognized for their talents.
ReplyDeleteGina Loring was perhaps the poet with whom I connected with most out of the four featured artists. As with the other slam poets, she came out to a tremendous amount of applause. Rather than briefly giving her own introduction and history like the other three did, Gina waited until the whole auditorium got quiet and just started singing into the microphone. Not speaking or going into her poetry, but actual singing. Because it was so unexpected, the whole audience stayed quiet, almost as if they were caught up in the rapture of her beautiful, pure, soulful voice. Of the four or so poems she performed, her singing precluded two of them, and the singing complimented the style of her poems, as both required some sort of rhythm and flow, but what bothered me was that while she sang, she kept her eyes closed. I'm sure that closing them probably helped her keep her focus and stay in her "zone," but it also in a way shut out the audience from truly joining her performance, so it cut the audience off from really connecting with her in that sense during those parts.
The poems she performed had a consistent but progressive theme throughout. The first poem she performed touched on the topic of love, and it was a topic that the vast majority of the audience, being mostly college students, could relate to. Almost everyone has at one point or another felt like he or she has been in love with someone else. Her next poem transitioned from love to the struggles of loving other people, which is also a topic that most everyone can relate to if he or she has ever had feelings for another. During this poem, she said a line that she went on to explain after she finished, which was "those who have no father love men differently." It was during this explanation that she chose to give a the audience a bit of her background, rather than at the very beginning of her set like the other artists. By speaking about her background and how that particular quote applied to her own life, she really made a connection with the audience because she was sharing something so personal. From there, she again transitioned from the hardships of love to the importance of self-respect and self-love, and the poem in which she communicated these to themes was pretty serious compared to the other poems. This last poem seemed to have a big impact on the audience, as it was dead-quiet save for Gina's voice, and as I looked around, there were many females in the audience who were tearing up. This particular poem hit home with a lot of the audience, myself included, and it seemed to have been directed at the female part of the audience. Gina's poems, as well as the poems of the other three poets, were highly biographical and were written "from the heart," as they liked to call it, so sharing basically their life experiences made them more credible and more relatable to the audience because they were willing to put themselves out there and make themselves vulnerable. The order in which she placed her poems was also appropriate; one would think that the order in which poems were performed would not really matter much, but the way in which she ordered hers had it so that the serious content level of each poem progressed. She started out with a very light-hearted, very lovey-dovey poem, and then got more serious with each poem, until the last poem had many people in tears. In between each poem and sips of water, she gave little anecdotes that related to the previous poem and in a way Had she started off with that last poem and made it first, it may have overwhelmed the audience and made them uncomfortable by forcing so much sadness and solemnness on them so soon in the presentation.
ReplyDeleteSlam poets seem to be professional public speakers with an edge, with a flair. It is just them on the stage, no visuals, no nothing. They use the sounds and tones of their voice to manipulate what they're saying and turn their words into something actually worth listening to. Gina's voice varied greatly in her volume, at times being soft and somewhat demure when covering more sensitive topics like love, and then raising her voice and sounding more assertive and almost aggressive when talking about topics like not allowing oneself to be taken advantage of. Because her poets are practiced and performed everywhere she goes, she pretty much had them down-packed and therefore did not need vocal fillers to fill her pauses. Her poise for the most part was assertive, with her legs apart so that she looked comfortable but not close enough that she started awkwardly swaying. Her enunciation was good for the most part; she often emphasized the words and phrases that she deemed important enough for everyone to clearly understand what she was saying. A problem that she had, as well as the other poets, was in the speed of her delivery. I understand that the flow and the rhythm of the poem is very important to the delivery, and that variation in speed is something to be appreciated, but there were some parts in which the poets were simply going way too quickly for anyone to even begin to comprehend what they were saying. It seemed like they were too focused on the "punchlines," or the most important parts of their speeches, that they ended up speeding through the parts that weren't as important or attention-grabbing. Eye contact may have been a problem, since Bovard is such a big venue, and the only light is on the stage; it may have been a challenge for Gina to really make eye contact with anyone since all the lights are on her and she can't really see anyone. I would have liked to think she may have locked eyes with me for a split second during her last poem. Overall, she did not seem nervous at all, because she's been working on this craft for so long. Even if she was nervous, it was something she could have effectively pushed into her delivery and performance. While what she said may not have necessarily been the secret for curing cancer, it was a way for us college students to find a way to cope with feelings that we may be experiencing for the first time in our lives, and the main objective of the series was that by bringing people from all over and having them share their stories through spoken word, it would encourage others to do the same.
ReplyDeleteI attended a public lecture by the US Ambassador to South Korea on Wednesday, February 23 at 4 p.m. It was held in the Club Room at the Davidson Conference Center where Ambassador Stephens talked about the U.S.-Korea relations, more specifically where we have been and where we were going. Professor David Kang who is the head of the Korean Studies Institute moderated the occasion in the beginning and end of the speech, especially during the Q&A portion that followed the speech.
ReplyDeleteAs Ambassador Stephens walked into the room, she brought in much presence with the way she held herself together and greeted the audience. She appeared very respectable yet approachable, and as she approached the podium, she poised herself quite comfortably, exuding an air of confidence and familiarity with giving speeches. She began her speech with a very familiar “ahn-young-ha-sae-yo,” the Korean greeting for “hello” which was received with much acclaim and attention by the crowd because the audience was primarily Korean. She spoke in a very enthusiastic tone as she started out giving a brief biography of how she got to where she is today. I thought her introduction was very appropriate and successful because she mentioned how she grew up in the West, constantly providing grounds for which members of the audience could relate to her since the audience, as residents of Los Angeles, all live in the West. Continuing with the listener links, she wove aspects of Korean history into her story about how she got involved and interested in Asia, which established a common ground with the audience in terms of cultural background.
Wrapping up about her biography, she smoothly transitioned into the main points of her speech by saying, “But I’m not here to talk about myself. Let’s talk about U.S. relations with Korea,” which clearly identified where she was going. What I thought was very effective was that she was very straightforward and clear about her main points. She described that the most important aspects to US-Korea relations has been Secretary Clinton’s three legs: defense, diplomacy and development. This provided much structure for the rest of the speech because she was able to describe and focus on each aspect of the three legs in relation to the US and Korea.
Ambassador Stephens continued to another set of three points that she established for herself in describing the transformations that have taken place in Korea. These were economic transformations, political transformations, and increasingly global transformations that are taking over the mindset of Koreans. Laying out this three-pronged structure allowed the audience to easily follow along with her speech in an organized and non-confusing manner. All the while, she spoke with much familiarity about every topic, showing and constantly establishing her knowledge as well as credibility as an ambassador to Korea. She paced herself well and the volume of her speech contributed to her grand presence in the room.
ReplyDeleteTransitioning onto the topic of where U.S. and Korea was headed, aspects of Ambassador Stephens’ delivery began to falter, beginning with eye contact. I think she began to realize that she was short on time, so she started pouring an information dump of sorts to the audience while describing the current events that have been shaping the relations between the countries. It became more and more apparent that she was glancing down at her paper, thus compromising the eye contact with the audience. This is when the speech became less engaging because she slightly lost touch with the audience’s attention span. Nevertheless, the content of her speech was very sound as she described, in a very complimenting tone, Korea’s responses to Haiti and North Korea bombings. She even incorporated a couple jokes about her Korean pronunciation of the word “Haiti” which bought back some of the attention she had lost. By using current events as supporting evidence of her optimistic view on U.S.-Korea relations, Ambassador Stephens was able to win more credibility from the audience because these were events that the audience was very familiar and interested in and thus could attest to themselves. She specifically focused in on the year 2011 and her opinions on how relations would be shaped. However, she once again began to read off her paper rather than talking to the audience, most likely due to the time constraints. Her speed also increased as if she was trying to cram a bunch of information into the audience.
In her conclusion, she succinctly reviewed her points of where the two countries will be headed in 2011 by giving a quick summary of the North Korea situation, ratification of the Free Trade Agreement and the global community that is developing in South Korea. These three examples all tied back to her three-pronged argument about the political, economic and global transformations of Korea. As she wrapped up, she left the audience with a very optimistic and relatable last impression because she incorporated Korean vocabulary into her speech, once again providing means to connect with the audience on a more personal level. Overall, I thought her speech was very effective taking into consideration the time constraint, and ultimately, having an audience that was already very engaged in the topic of discussion played to her benefits as she was received in a very welcoming manner.
On Thursday, March 3rd at 7PM, I listened to a lecture by Dr. Patricia Rose on the importance of hip-hop culture. Dr. Patricia Rose formally spoke in front of the USC Black Student Assembly in partnership with the USC USG Program Speakers Board as a source of intellectual dialogue, creativity, and positivity for the members.
ReplyDeleteDr. Tricia Rose has written a few books about hip-hop and the social dynamics of the music genre, so it seemed like she was incredibly knowledgeable about the subject and knew her points very well. As soon as Rose began her speech, she exuded passion about the subject with powerful voice projection. She immediately captured the audience’s attention through a successful listener relevance link to the current state of hip-hop music, specifically, the types of music displayed on popular entertainment television stations like MTV and BET. What made Dr. Tricia Rose such a successful speaker was not just because of her clever metaphors and detailed stories throughout this lecture, but also her delivery. Rose maintained consistent eye contact with the audience throughout the entire event. She made sure to connect with every single person in the room at some point during her presentation, and was always very direct with her body movement and gestures. When emphasizing powerful statements like describing the mentality of hip-hop as the “gangster-pimp-hoe trinity” (Rose, Tricia, 2011, March 3), Rose utilized pauses for effect. In addition, the confidence of the tone and volume of her voice made Rose’s words twice as inspiring and strong. Her use of stories and facts allowed the audience to stay alert. She was never lax or dull in terms of providing further information on the hip-hop culture and her views on it. Those who attended the event through the assembly or just for academic extra credit had no choice but to be alert and somewhat attentive, because that’s what her presence and lecture commanded from us. Her gestures also helped get her main points across; she made use of her space by occasionally moving as she talked and used hand gestures whenever she talked about something she was passionate about. I think this is mainly why Dr. Tricia Rose’s speech captured so much attention; it’s a subject that she clearly shares a deep love for, and she ensures it comes out through her organization and delivery of the lecture.
I think what really made Dr. Tricia Rose’s lecture stand out was her ability to use metaphors and analogies to help paint vivid images in the listener’s head. For example, Rose compares hip-hop to a “whipping child for stereotypical ideals and ideologies” (Rose, Tricia, 2011, March 3). When discussing anything regarding race and culture, it is always crucial that the speaker is careful and conscious not to make generalized, insensitive statements. I think the reason why Rose was able to gracefully avoid this, was because of her supporting material. Although she may have not had a specific fact after every point, she was able to clearly articulate a deeper understanding of hip-hop’s role in creating damaging ideas on African Americans. As she verbally led the audience through the history of the genre, Rose used this background information to emphasize her main points about hip-hop as “a place to find all Black stereotypes,” (Rose, Tricia, 2011, March 3) despite it being one of the most important genres. From here, Rose transitioned into the structures of oppression she describes hip-hop as being responsible for helping to set up. This became a pattern for the rest of her speech; Rose would use various stories and examples to help her transition from one point to the next, and relate it back to what this means for hip-hop in general.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I really hope to take from Dr. Tricia Rose’s lecture is her ability to evoke pathos through her words and body language. I feel like the reason her speech was so moving on the audience was a combination of her thought-provoking discourse and ability to read the audience. Based off of how we reacted, Rose plotted out her points and delivery of these points very carefully. While I do not hope to emulate the same intensity on a speech about, for instance, the Easter bunny, I do want to try to emulate her same drive and passion that she exudes while speaking. Overall, Tricia Rose did a fantastic job on covering a topic that is not always covered with such comprehensive detail. Hopefully, I can take some of Rose’s same techniques and apply them to my own future public speaking opportunities.
Since I was observing a documentary, Professor Birman's attention grabber was simply showing the film and waiting for the audience's reaction from it. Showing the documentary alone was enough to spark conversation from his audience; this he knew and in this way his introduction was extremely effective. The question-and-answer conclusion session really helped recap the film and wrap it up and provide answers to the audience. The question and answer session began with the interviewer asking prominent questions she had from the film, then opened the floor for everybody else. The transitions came when the next question was answered. The conversation flowed really well.
ReplyDeleteBeing a professor at USC, the speaker was very effective in his vocal variety, rate, enunciation, volume, and poise; he used hand gestures a lot, which was appropriate since he was very passionate about what he was talking about, and it seemed to flow more like a normal conversation. (Likely because it was done from a documentary, and also we had a small intimate audience, over half of which was filled with his colleagues and students) so in this case his presentation was very appropriate. He clearly stated his purpose and feelings from the documentary. He was extremely credible since he was the one who made this documentary in the first place, and had the most experience from the situation. He seemed very ethical in handling the material and while the documentary was extremely controversial, he did not act angry about it but rather tried to make rationale from it. Since the documentary focused on a young girl tried as an adult in the court system from killing someone she thought was going to kill her when she was working as a prostitute at her house, there were a great deal of ethical responsibilities that were brought up, such as the US court and legal system and prostitution/drugs/child services in general. I learned so much from going to this seminar about how unfair the legal system can be especially in unfortunate situations, there are so many factors that go into it besides justice. I will try to be as relaxed as he was and feel confident about what I am speaking about.