Final Self-Reflection

TO: Mrs. Jorgensen

FROM: Nathan Keith
DATE: 12/11/2017
RE: Final Self-Reflection

Comm 1020 has been a great benefit for me and has taught me so much about becoming a better speaker through
organization, rhetoric, delivery and use of visual aids, adaptation to the audience, and managing speech anxiety. This has
made my public speaking more effective and persuasive, as well as easier to follow and to understand.

Organization
Ive learned a lot about patterns of organization, which include topical organization, chronological organization, spatial
organization, causal organization, problem-solution organization, problem-cause-solution organization, comparative
advantages organization, Monroes motivated sequence organization, and narrative organization (Rothwell, 2017).
Overall, the most I have learned about my organization is that it is important to make sure that each part of your speech
contributes to your main point by organizing it in a way that puts the sub points under the overall points. This will make
your speech easier to follow. One example of this was in my persuasive speech when I organized my body into
explaining WHAT there is to love about food, persuading the audience as to WHY they should love food, and describing
HOW they can love food. This helped the audience to follow my speech by easily seeing that I was educating them, then
persuading them, then showing them how they can take action and follow through with my challenge.

Appeals and Integrated Evidence

This class has taught me a lot about use of rhetoric to make my speaking more persuasive. It is important to use each of
the three. Otherwise, your argument will be flimsy and unbelievable. For example, without logos, you will have no
information upon which to base your argument; without ethos, your audience will have no reason to accept your
argument; and without pathos, your audience will not be motivated to make a change or to be moved by your
argument.

Logos:
Logos is the use of logic and evidence to support your argument (Rothwell, 2017). I learned that it is important
to rely on a few strong arguments, rather than upon many weak ones. If you can present even one solid reason
that is perfect, your audience will have no reason to deny what you have to say. However, if you were to provide
dozens of weak reasons, they wouldnt really provide more than guesswork as to the reality of your claims
(Rothwell, 2017). I relied upon logos a lot for my persuasive speech because I mostly relied on scientific reasons
why enjoying food would benefit you.

Ethos:
Ethos is the use of credibility to make your argument more persuasive and to enhance your speaking. This class
has taught me that relying upon authoritative sources is absolutely necessary to the effectivity of your speeches
(Rothwell, 2017). I relied heavily upon ethos when giving my informative speech because I needed my
information to be trustable and reliable. As a part of this, I relied mostly on Myers-Briggs and their research, as
well as the research of 16Personalities. I also relied upon ethos (especially primary ethos, which is your own
credibility) a lot for my demonstration speech. I talked about how you could improve your score on the ACT and
relied on my own expertise of massively improving my score over 4 years of work. My personal experience
showed that I understood how to do this extremely well and made it even more credible, it seemed, than if I had
just relied upon some other expert on the subject.

Pathos:
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 Pathos is the use of emotional appeals to effect your audience (Rothwell, 2017). Pathos can include motivating
appeals, fear appeals, anger appeals, and many others (Rothwell, 2017). This has always been something that I
have struggled with because I have a hard time painting a picture and speaking creatively. Despite this, I relied
heavily upon pathos when giving my personal artifact speech. I referenced my experiences in high school and
how they made a picture that a friend had drawn for me a meaningful and personal artifact that I appreciated.
The stories I shared were primarily used to exemplify why it meant something and to show that to the audience.
I still think that this is something I need to work on because I dont think I provided enough detail for my
audience to be moved. As I continue to work on my emotional appeals, my work will become more persuasive
and meaningful.

Delivery and Visual Aids

To me, delivery and visual aids have always been easy for me to understand. As long as I deliver my speech and show my
visual aids in a way that helps the audience to follow what I am trying to show them, they are helpful. I think my use of
visual aids was a little sporadic, with basically only using pictures for my informative speech and only using short lists for
my persuasive speech, but I did well using it and always did what was best for the specific speech I was giving. One thing
I guess I could work on is looking at my visual aid less (and looking at the audience more) because the visual aid is to help
them, not me.

Audience Assessment and Adaptation:

To me, audience assessment and adaptation is all about knowing where your audience stands on an issue so that you
dont say anything to push them away or offend them. This had an effect upon my choice of persuasive speech. I chose
to speak about caring about food because I knew it was something that nobody in the audience would be against but
was something that I could convince them to take action on and to change their ideology. Because I chose something
that they werent strongly against, it was within their latitude of acceptance, which means that it was not too far from
their current ideology for them to reject it (Rothwell, 2017). I also knew that my audience knew a lot about food (having
eaten it their whole lives), but that they might not be aware of the science behind food, so I made sure to spend a main
point helping my audience to have enough knowledge about food to make a more informed decision. Their American
culture may have caused them to care less about food than I do, so it was important to focus on why food can be
important.

Speech Anxiety Management:

This class has helped me to manage my speech anxiety. It taught that public speaking is a naturally scary thing. It comes
as a result of focusing too much on how you could fail, having the ideology that you cannot make any mistakes or you
will be ruined, fearing too much about trying to please the audience and not offend anyone, and believing that everyone
is watching and judging you, among other things (Rothwell, 2017). The book also offered many ways to manage your
speech anxiety, including practicing and preparing, visualizing success, gaining perspective (acknowledging that you
might make a mistake but that it is okay), viewing the speech like other speaking opportunities that you are familiar with
(such as speaking coversationally to your friends), relaxing, and systematic desensitization (slowly exposing yourself to
public speaking more and more) (Rothwell, 2017).

One of the most effective strategies that I used to decrease anxiety was to practice and prepare. Feeling like I was more
ready when I gave my speeches helped me to be more confident in what I was saying. For example, early on in the class
when I did my personal artifact speech, I felt like I was rambling and didnt know what to say (I felt like I kept repeating
myself about why the artifact was important without fully properly conveying the reasons behind why it was important
to me) because I had not practiced as much. Contrastingly, by the end of the semester, when I gave my persuasive
speech, I was very confident in what I was saying because I had worked hard to prepare my speech and to make sure
that I knew exactly what I wanted to say for it: I hit all the main points well and made sure to be specific about the
reasons behind what I was saying. I plan on using this strategy throughout my life to feel more prepared when doing
something stressful and difficult, especially in public speaking.

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Lessons Learned:
This class has taught me how to be a better speaker primarily by organizing my speeches in a way that relies upon
rhetoric to make my writing more persuasive.

Works Cited
Rothwell, J. D. (2017). Practically Speaking (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.