Transcription
Hi COMM1! I am currently working through grading all of your final draft one speeches, which is a long process for me—so just to refresh your memory, uh, in case you don't remember, earlier I talked about this where for your final draft speech I will make an individualized video for each and every one of you, okay? It takes me a long time to do that, so uh, as you're waiting for your video to come in and for your speech to be graded, I wanted to pause and make this video for all of you so I can talk about some of the common things I've been seeing with the videos that I've been grading so far, okay, common mistakes that I've seen—so that way if I don't get to your video in time by the time you start working on your next video, then at least you know some tweaks that you can make to your video to make it even stronger for next time.
Alright, so starting off with format. What is the most common thing that I'm seeing with format? Now, uh, the most common mistake I'm seeing with format is not including those internal previews. What are internal previews? Well, at the top of each main point, you're going to divide it into sub points, right? So in order to help that audience along, you're going to tell them at the top of each main point what your two or three sub points are going to be.
Now here's a secret: audiences do not listen very well; they actually only listen at about a 25% listening efficiency rate. That means they're only getting a quarter of your speech—that's crazy, right? So in order to increase that listening efficiency rate, there are tricks that we can do as a speaker, and one thing is to signpost as much as possible. Meaning, to outline that speech and to let them know what those sub points are going to be. Other things are things like being repetitive in the speech, um, you know, but but these are some strategies that we can take.
So at the top of each of your main points, you're going to say something like—if this was the K12 speech that you did last time, right—you're going to say something like, "Now there are tons of problems that our students are facing, but I'm going to focus on two of them. First, some academic issues, and second, some health issues. So first, let's get started with the academic issues that these students are facing..." Now if you notice, I also included that first and second again; it's just that extra little numbering that your audience will automatically hear it and realize you're giving them a list. If we were to skip that and just say, "There's a lot of problems our students are facing like health and academic issues," that just sounds like a statement. That doesn't sound like I'm giving you a heads up about what's going to happen, right?
Now, again, if you don't have sub points in your main points, what you're doing is giving that grocery store list. What do I mean by grocery store list? Well, go back and re-watch the persuasive lecture video where I talk about the exercise that we do in class where I used to have students do a whole grocery list up on the board, and then I'd cover it up and I'd ask them to list all the different things that we had on our grocery store list. Students did horrible at this—they scored less than an "F" on it, right? Um, however, once we started categorizing that information, then all of a sudden they were able to retain more. So, if you're able to categorize those main points into sub points, you're not only going to help your audience but you're also going to help yourself because now instead of having to remember 10 different facts in your problem section, now you're remembering, "okay, I have some health issues," and your brain sort of naturally fills in the blanks. "I have some academic issues," your brain naturally fills in the blanks, right? So internal previews is the first thing I'm noticing on the formatting.
The next thing I'm noticing on the format is on personal solutions—now these can be such a pain, right, but if done well they could be very effective. Now I've mentioned this in the modules, but for your personal solutions you want to be specific and unique, specific and unique. I should not be able to guess at the start of your speech what your personal solutions are going to be, and if I can guess, then that was a wasted opportunity. So for example, uh, we have sugar addiction coming up as a topic; I already know what 90% of the personal solutions are going to be for the sugar addiction topic, are you ready for them? Here they're—here they are—it's like I'm a psychic or something: I'm going to hear 90% of people tell me, "don't eat sugar," "if I'm craving sugar grab something healthy like a piece of fruit," or "chew some gum," "drink some water," uh, "have some—do some exercise," "go for a walk instead," "track your calories..." You know these are all things that I already know, right? We already know these things, so it was a missed opportunity. Instead, if I have a student who tells me about a documentary that's on the sugar industry and tells me about where I can stream this particular documentary, some details about it, right, all of a sudden I go, "oh, well you know what, when I'm done grading tonight and I'm gonna take a break, that's not a bad idea, I will go on Netflix and stream that documentary," right? So that is a far superior personal solution than just saying, "don't eat sugar," right, "have some fruit instead." Um, so you want to make sure that you're pushing yourself with those personal solutions. You want to have three to four specific and unique personal action steps because if somebody can't do the first one, then at least maybe they can do one of the other ones that they give so that that way when the speech is done nobody has any excuse; they have at least one thing that they can do in order to put a dent on the issue, right?
Um, okay, and then the last thing I'm seeing a lot of with the formatting is on the balancing of time—um, so what's happening is sometimes I'll see like a really long problem section and then a tiny little cause section, and then a medium-sized solution. You want them to all be about roughly equal in length, okay? So for a seven-minute speech, you're talking about a minute and 45-ish per main point. Um, it can go a little lower than that and go a little higher than that, but you don't want it to be, you know, two and a half minutes for a main point and then a minute and 15 seconds for the next main point, right, so you want to keep them roughly balanced, so that's another thing I'm seeing with format.
Moving on to content, uh, for this first speech, it's no surprise the biggest issue I'm seeing is on sources. So first off, remember again that you do have to have newspaper sources, and I know sometimes this can be a pain; it's like, "why scholarly journals are you know even more uh you know credible than a newspaper is." Look, I'm putting restrictions on you to test your researching skills. This has given me flashbacks of when I went to law school and I would do research and I would find the perfect case, right, but then you'd look and it'd be on the eighth circuit, but I needed the ninth circuit, so it was useless to me, right? But what happened was that it pushed me to be a stronger researcher—the more that I had those certain restrictions on me. I'm doing the same thing for you all, so you've got to do those newspapers, you have to do 2016 to more recent—um, so make sure that you are doing that. Now when you go to cite those sources, make sure that you're giving me a full date on those newspapers, so uh, newspapers are published daily, right; it's not like they're just published in June of 2020 or summer of 2021, they are published every single day, so you want month, day, and year; I'm noticing that a lot. Um, the good news is that's a that's a small tweak you can make that will make a big impact on your grade for your next final speech, right.
Another thing I'm noticing is uh, where there's a lot of sources maybe in one main point and then there's nothing really in the remaining main points, so make sure that you are balancing out; again, it doesn't have to be like this, but a good rule of thumb is put one in the intro and then put two in each of the three main points, and then that will get you to seven very easily.
Um, let's see, in addition to that, let's go down to uh, delivery—oh! Time allocation—also again, so make sure that you're getting as close to those seven minutes as you can—um, if it is six to eight, you're fine, but if it was five minutes and 59 seconds, then you should have sneezed or something because that would have brought you up to six minutes—you're losing points at 5:59. If it's at eight minutes and one second, well then you should have not taken that extra breath, right, because now you're over on time and now you're losing points, and that sounds like I'm being strict, but really it's not because you're a minute and a second over at that point, and I do have to draw a bright line in the sand somewhere, and so that's where I've chosen to do it. So 5:59, 8:01, you don't want to do that. One of the only benefits of being an asynchronous class is that when you record your speeches, if you are 8:01 or 5:59, you can re-record it! Yes, I know that's another you know eight minutes of your life, but it's okay, right?
Going down to delivery, the biggest thing I'm seeing here is still a little bit of the camera setup, although I will say as a whole you all are doing pretty well on this now; it can communicate different things if you are looking up at your audience, if you're looking down at your audience, and so what's seen as most professional is if you are at eye level with the audience, okay. Now for some of you, you're doing an excellent job here; for some of you, when you do move it up to eye level, you will want to double check, make sure there's not a lot of dead space up above you, right, so you're kind of like tiny on the frame and then there's a lot of empty space around you—um, so if that is the case, once you get it to eye level, you'll just want to tilt the camera down slightly to eliminate some of the extra space up above you but still make it so it's not cutting off the top of your head; remember again it should be waist up, so right now I'm not doing a formal speech so I'm not waist up, but do make sure that it is waist up otherwise we are losing so much of your non-verbal communication; but we're not able to see gestures and things like that, right; we already lose so much just being on camera versus being in person, so don't lose even more—um, there are some people are still standing too close to the camera; you shouldn't be able to read anything; you should you should be several feet away again so that you can be waist up, and then you do want to make sure that you're giving yourself enough space so that you can do a transition walk, which I'll get to in just a second—um, so you do want to make sure you have that space, which means if you're filming on your phone, no longer should you be filming vertically; you should be filming horizontally with your phone to give yourself some space, okay?
Which brings you to the next thing: transition walks. So now that you all are getting real good at this organizational model, now we're going to do something with our delivery to show that we're moving from one point to the next, okay? So for audiences again that don't listen very well, uh, one tip to increase that listening efficiency rate is to have those transition statements where when you move between each part of the speech you say, "Now that I talk to you about all this, next let's talk about all this," right—um, so you're telling them you're moving from one point to the next; you're repeating yourself a little bit there, so again that's increasing that listening efficiency rate. Now what you can do is non-verbally also show them that you're moving from one point to the next, and you're going to do that in uh in transition walks, so the way the transition walks work is this: there's some theory behind it that is you want to spend the majority of your speech centered to your audience in the middle of the screen, right, but at some point audiences over here should feel included, and at some point audiences over here feel included, so the nice thing about a five-point speech like we're doing—intro, three main points, conclusion—is here's what you can do: for your introduction, you center yourself to the audience; for the first main point, when you give that transition statement, walk, right, and you're going to walk over to your left or right, whatever feels more comfortable; now when I say walk, it depends how much space you have; if we were in a huge classroom, you could take like 10 steps in your transition walk—um, if you are on camera, you could probably take about two steps, right? So always make sure, whether you're in this class or giving a speech outside of this, if you're doing a transition, just make it fit the space that you're in, okay? So intro, first main point; when you're ready to go to the causes, then you walk back to the middle; when you're all done with the causes, you want people over here to feel included, so go over here for your solutions, and then when you're all done with your solutions, you come back to the center for your conclusion, okay?
Alright, uh, last thing to talk about for delivery that I'm seeing a lot of is on the note card; I'm seeing a lot of holding the note card with two hands or just holding our hands together or sometimes just gesturing with our hands together. Now this is totally normal; in fact, it feels more comfortable—I even keep finding myself wanting to go like this because it just feels more comfortable, especially if we're nervous and giving a speech; it's like, "what do we do with our hands? Ah, I don't know what to do; oh, here we go, this feels good," right? Um, but unfortunately, while that feels more comfortable to us, to the audience they can perceive the speaker as being closed off or more nervous, okay, and so if they're perceiving us as being closed off or more nervous, then they can ultimately rate us as less warm, less trustworthy, less likable, less persuasive—all things we don't want to be lesser; we want to be more of those things, right? So instead of holding our hands together or gesturing with our hands together, you can hold that note card with just one hand; I would make it the hand that you don't write with; the hand you do write with can be the one that you gesture with more often because that's your dominant hand; if there's no reason to gesture, it can just come down to that relaxed position, meaning just sort of hang down by your side loosely; when you're ready to gesture again, it can come up above your waist; do whatever it is you need to do and then come on down again—um, if you are folding that note card, you will be less tempted as well to be holding it with two hands—so do make sure that you are folding it.
Okay, alright, I think that's good enough. Let me get back to grading all of your speeches, and best of luck to you COMM 1!