Trent+Tate's+Journal+Page

== =Friday December 3= Reflect on the semester. What did you learn? Is there something that you think is still missing? Did you enjoy this class?

The semester has been an experience for sure. I have come to know the extreme importance of organization in my speeches. Giving a speech MUST be organized for a potentially effectual delivery. Also, the use of body language and enthusiasm was brought to my attention. I was mainly brought to learn the different essential keys necessary for contructing and displaying an effective speech. I do think some things are missing because I did not learn exactly how to improve everything I was missing, but I do feel a considerably large amount of improvement in me and my speaking. I did in fact enjoy the class. Even though I was nervous in giving speeches, I had an enjoyable time speaking them. I enjoyed standing in front of people speaking, it really revealed how interested I am in speaking. I can now gloat on this class and feel good. =Friday November 5=

Journal Prompt
Reflect on the progress you are making during speaking. Write a journal entry entailing at least 3 ways that you have improved since your first speech in class.

My speech has improved in a few ways I would say. For one, I definitely had more organization in my outline which made my speech flow better and become easier for people to follow and understand. Another improvement was how I practiced beforehand to make the time limit. My first speech I went over the limit which hurt my grade, and on my last speech I fit the time perfect. Also, an improvement I had come to was how I used a notecard effectively to deliver my entire speech in the right order and in a better fashion by citing sources and by delivering my outline in my speech in the perfect organized order. Organization, time limit, and effective delivering methods are all factors I think I improved in. =Friday Oct 22= Watch the videos in the sidebar of the website for visual aids. Write a journal entry detailing good and bad examples in each of the videos.

After watching the videos in the sidebar about visual aids, one can see good and bad examples of using visual aids. Some good examples of using a visual aid were shown how the lady knew where everything was on the aid to avoid getting lost and how she kept and maintained eye contact with her audience as she presented her visual aid. Some bad examples of using a visual aid were shown how the lady was confused and had to look at the visual aid to point out where things were as if she had not even practiced with it, how she used a huge stick to point out little points on her visual aid, and also how she failed to maintain eye contact with her audience. When presenting a visual aid, you must practice with it a lot before you use it to know what to expect and what problems may occur and also you should maintain eye contact with your audience.

=10/08/10= =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?=

Plagiarism is illegal. According to the dictionary, illegal means "contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, or laws." Therefore, practicing Plagiarism is breaking the law. Breaking the law is a criminal act and a sin. Fully grown sin leads to death. On an extreme scale, with all of this said, you could infer that Plagiarism leads to death. If you do not want to die, then do not practice plagiarism. To prevent plagiarism, scan whatever you are writing or saying entirely and search for any information that is not yours and cite all of it. Plagiarizing is stealing someone else's ideas or thoughts that they took the time to research and make reliable. Do not plagiarize because you are stealing and breaking the law. That is what it all comes down to. Don't be a criminal.

= Friday, September 17 =

Journal Prompt
Using what the book says about listening, explain specific ways to demonstrate good listening. In what ways are good listening skills different between interpersonal communication (one on one) and public speaking (one to group)? How are they the same? Use examples from your life to support your statements as well as quotes from the book.

Listening is an active process that involves both concentration and thinking. There are many barriers that keep one from listening, but there are ways to avoid those barriers also. External noise from the inside and the outside of the listening area causes a distraction from listening. To avoid that one can arrive early enough at a speech to get a seat where you can see and hear easily. Internal Noises are the noises one might have in their head from their own personal problems. To avoid this one must redouble their efforts to concentrate. Being annoyed by how the speaker delivers can interfere with someone listening. To avoid being biased, one can concentrate on the content of the speech rather than the delivery. Emotional Reactions can also make it hard to listen. These are caused when something said in the speech messes with the listeners emotions. For example, profanity can cause a negative emotional response which makes it hard for the listener to listen. To avoid this, one can screen out emotional reactions by resolving to hear everything a speaker has to say before making a judgement. Another distraction from listening is daydreaming during a speech. One must learn to listen actively to avoid letting themself go off and daydream. Fatigue is another factor that causes a barrier to listening because one must have energy to listen actively. To avoid reaching fatigue, one must get well-rested before a speech, especially an important speech. Taking improper notes during a speech is worse than not taking notes at all, which is pointless to do. To avoid this, one must develop note-taking skills. To improve one's overall listening skills, one must prepare to listen, avoid distractions, identify the central idea of the speech, identify the main points of the speech, think along with the speaker, and take effective notes. If one masters these, then they have truly achieved active listening. Faking attention is something everyone has used before which is not always the best to do especially with one-on-one conversations because it's impossible to respond to your friend if you were not actually listening. I am guilty of faking attention with friends because it is hard to concentrate on one thing when so many things are going on. In a public speaking setting, it is easy and acceptable to fake attention because you will not need to respond, you are usually only there to listen. Active listening is more important with interpersonal communication because you are expected to respond, but it is nice to also listen closely to a public speaker. Achieving active listening skills is important for you because it improves your overall social-self and ability to communicate effectively.

**First Journal Prompt**

How did your group use the preparation time provided? We started out picturing a tower and understanding it's features. The base is most important and what helps withstand the rest of the tower, so we started out building our base. Haley Draper got on top of the base with the scissors and provided a stable base while the rest of us built the tallness of the "Watson Tower". Preparing and understanding what we were building before we started building made us successful. We reached our goal because our masterminds together planned out exactly what had to be done. However, we were not perfect and had a few misunderstanding but we just made some In Game Adjustments (IGA) and pushed through making the tallest tower. Did/would have a good plan make the building process easier? Having a good plan is the only reason we made such a killler tower. We made sure what we were doing before we started which gave us pretty much an outline of what we were making. Also, having the idea in our minds helped us visualize what it would and could be like and if we needed to make adjustments.

How could this help you with writing a speech? Well, this activity obviously was assigned for this question. We made a plan and imagined our model of the tower before we started building it. That connects to writing a speech. If you plan out your speech, make an outline, and visualize what you want to work, then the process is more smooth and the result is more efficient.

Did your group have any misunderstandings? We had few misunderstandings. The big one was how our base didn't come out as stable as possible; it wasn't level. As soon as we saw this coming, we made an adjustment and succeeded. We all decided we need this base to be a tripod. We rolled our newspapers and formed our base into something even more promising. Our original idea, through the process, was improved and became more than what we had imagined. After we made it stable and tall, we needed to decorate it and add that little extra oomph. We gave the tower some hair. It looked like a palm tree or a head with hair. It almost looked like an exotic tiki cabana theme. It looked fantastic! Anyways, the point is that planning and outlining your idea for a speech before starting will speed the process up, most likely cause you to have fewer needed adjustments, and will just simply make it all the better.

If so, how did that affect the process? Having misunderstandings only slowed our process down. No permanent problems happened or anything that caused us to restart. Time was the only thing affected, but we made adjustments and reached past our goal. You may say we are dreamers, but we are not the only ones.