Haley+Draper's+Journal+Page

12/3/10 This semester has been stressful but fun. There's always something a little frightening about getting up in front of your peers and exposing your thoughts and beliefs. Throughout the semester I have learned that presenting a simple speech to my class will not be the death of me, but in fact, may boost my confidence. I also learned that organization and flow of your thoughts is very important because if you're lost there is no doubt your audience will be too. Another thing I learned is how the wording of your speech can make a great difference on how your audience perceives it. Meaning that you could take the same speech topic and just change the way you say things in order to make it informative, persuasive, etc. Doing things in APA format was something new to me as well since I had previously only worked with MLA. Some additional things I would have enjoyed in the class is going through the book more thoroughly to see how all of the elements of a speech work the way they do instead of just getting up and giving the speeches without much prep. But I also realize that we have a lot to do in one tiny semester so going over everything isn't practical. Overall, I have enjoyed learning about everyone in the class and learning about myself. Thanks for a successful semester, Mrs. James!

11/5/10 For me, giving speeches turned out to be much more difficult than I initially expected. Practice makes perfect though, so each time I've given a speech I have improved. One way that I've improved is that my speeches flow more and my thought process is more organized. In other words, I'm better at telling where I'm going and making the points clear. Another way is that I am a lot less nervous. After giving the first speech, I learned that the dreaded task of standing in front of everyone and sharing your thoughts is not nearly as bad as it seems and I was able to relax more on the second time around. A third way I've improved since my first speech is that I am much more confident in the use of notes. Though I do cram as much information as possible onto my notecard, I noticed on my second speech that all those notes were simply my security because I didn't actually use most of them.

10/22/2010 One good example of visual aid use found in the videos was how the lady was familiar with her aid and knew what all the information was and where it was located on her aid. By doing this, she was able to avoid getting lost and able to mantain eye contact with her audience. A few bad examples were how the lady was not familiar at all with her material and had to look and point at the visual aid instead of facing her audience. This made her seem as if she'd never practiced and very unprofessional. Also the giant pointer she was using was more of a distraction than helpful to her presentation. It is important to maintain eye contact with your audience and to know your information well.

10/15/2010 Today's Journal: Why does Mrs. James care so much about plagiarism? What can I do to make sure I don't show up in one of her examples in the future? Mrs. James cares so much about plagiarism because she values people doing their own work. It;s not fair for someone to take credit of another and she wants to get that point across to us as students before we break rules and have to be punished for them. By citing sources and being aware of where we got information, we can avoid showing up in her examples in the future.

09/17/2010 Good listening is an active process that requires a little more brain effort than you might think. Concentration is key in listening in order to understand the speaker and ignore distractions. In public speaking, avoiding distractions is very important, so you may want to sit alone to elimate that. Also, taking notes could be very effective in fully understanding the speaker's message. Intrapersonal communication is much easier to concentrate on and distractions are less likely to happen. It is also more personal, one on one, than public speaking. In public speaking, the likeliness that the speaker will have the full attention of everyone in the room is very slim while attention on the speaker can easily be kept in intrapersonal communication. These concepts happen in my everyday life. While trying to tell a story to a large group of friends, I can easily lose the attention of some friends while they have start to have their own conversation. But if I told the story to certain friends one on one, they would pay attention and fully understand my story.

09/03/2010 Our group spent the preparation time discussing our different ideas for the tower. Everyone contributed and listened to eachother without arguing. They were all good ideas, but in the end we decided that in order to make our tower tall enough and able to withstand the "slight breeze", it would need a stable base. Having a well thought out plan did make our building process easier. We didn't waste time using trial and error; we knew what we were doing. Of course, our plan wasn't perfect; we had to make some tweaks along the way, but in the end we reached our goal of having the tallest tower. This could help in writing a speech because ususally for a speech, you must give yourself plenty of time to prepare. You can't just throw something together when it's your turn or your speech won't hold up. My group was easy to work with and from what I can remember, we did not have any misunderstandings. :)