I think that there are several things that I will take from this class that I will use in my future. The first thing that I know that I will use is the organizational patters that we learned throughout the class. It has taught me to be better organized and to think about the different ways to organize information. I also found the adapting to the audience concept to be very useful and there were several things about that that I did not think about before we read it in the book. I also think that relating to the audience, like we learned in a few of the chapters, will be useful later in life. I never realized that letting people know how something affects them and relates to them was so important in persuading them. The practicing and preparation concepts that I learned and used for the speeches will also help me in life.

Class Concepts

There were quite a few concepts that really helped me in preparing my speech. First off, the chapter detailing how to organize the outline was very helpful since I'm always a little confused with how the outline is supposed to be arranged. It helped me to arrange my points in a way that would be comprehensible to my audience and also let me plan where to put my supporting material. The second chapter that helped me in the book was the chapter on the introduction and conclusion, I didn't realize how important they were in my speech and that it was important in getting and keeping my audience’s attention. I really improved my introduction and conclusion by the final speech by using a story that caught everyone’s attention and a conclusion that made people think. And the last concept from the book that I really thought was important was adapting to the audience. I never really thought much about how the audience could be different merely because of the time of day or the location. It’s definitely something that I will take into account if I ever need to give a speech again.

Favorite Speech

My favorite speech that we did for this semester probably had to be the informative speech. The reason that speech was my favorite because I really loved the subject that I picked since it has been a long time hobby of mine. I also learned a lot about the camera's history and mechanics in my research, benefitting not only my audience but myself as well. This was also the speech that I was the most comfortable giving, I knew the material fairly well and was very confident in what I was presenting. I usually am pretty nervous speaking up front, but speaking on something that I really loved helped me overcome that pretty easily. Unfortunately I did have to rush through some of the material because of the time limit, so I hope that everyone was able to understand everything that I was saying. I definitely have improved a lot because of this class, and I know that it will help me in my future.

Fallacies in arguing

So far in our book, we have covered good persuasion techniques and the different ways to present the evidence. Another thing to take into consideration is avoiding using flawed arguments, or fallacies. It is very important to not use fallacies in trying to persuade someone. Although it may convince someone who is uninformed, it will leave a very bad impression on someone if they catch your bad logic and will prevent them from trusting you in the future.  There are four different kinds of fallacies: Faulty assertions, flawed evidence, defective reasoning, and erroneous responses. Faulty assertions are where the speaker tries to convince the audience that there is only two choices. Flawed evidence is where the speaker's evidence is used inappropriately or deceptively to try to influence the audience. Sometimes when someone doesn't have enough evidence to support their claim, they throw in some "filler" evidence to try to impress the audience to sway them in their favor. The next fallacy is the fallacy in responding. This is where one makes an error when responding to someones idea, mainly by throwing false accusations to discredit the person. The last fallacy is through reasoning. This is where the speaker is missing the link between his evidence and the conclusion. I found the table in the book was extremely helpful, and plan on using it to prevent myself from using them in my own speech.

Question #2

One of the most recent times that I tried to persuade someone actually happened on facebook about a very controversial topic. One of the first reasoning types that I used was an analogy, comparing a point that he had made to an exact same situation (that he agreed with me on) to show that his point was not reasonable. The analogy type of reasoning was one of the reasoning types that I used the most, but I also used the inductive reasoning in a few situations. One example was that  he pointed to someone else (scientists) saying that those people believe the same way he did, so he must be right. I then pointed out that on another issue that he believed in, those same people have "proved" that his side of the issue is wrong, so either he was wrong on the second issue or there was a possibility that those scientists are wrong on the first issue, just as he believes that they were wrong on the second issue.
We were both strongly set in our opinions, and even though my family and friends said my reasoning and persuading techniques were very good, the guy that I was debating with would not be persuaded in any way.

Speech Buddy

For this week, I found the speech buddy videos really caught my attention since it is an issue that I am familiar with. I have been homeschooled almost all of my life, so naturally I wanted to start on the video about the pros of homeschooling. One of the things that I probably would have changed about this speech was to add some statistics about the success rates of homeschoolers or to include a small narrative from someone that was homeschooled. I did like how she included a couple of quotes in her speech (this would qualify as the logos type of appeal). The second type of appeal that the speaker used would have been ethos, as she stated in the very beginning of her speech that she had studied the topic thus helping her credibility.
 Listening to her speech, I completely agree with all of her points. I and my siblings spent less hours on school material than most schooled students and we did a lot better than most California students on the end of the year star testing. One of my brothers was constantly being picked on and even had his tooth punched out in the first grade in public school; homeschooling solved this problem for him. Also, the flexibility of homeschooling was incredible! We had our school curriculum program on our laptops, and this allowed us to be able to bring our school with us when we visited family or went on a trip. It also allowed my younger brother to complete two years of school in one.
Now looking at the speech with the cons of homeschooling, I feel that the speaker did not research homeschooling too well. His first point addressed parents being the teachers, and he made a statement about how the parents could never be as qualified, if not more qualified, than a teacher. First off, the parent knows the child better than a teacher ever could. The parent knows the child's strengths and weaknesses, they know the learning techniques that help the child learn better, and they also know what motivates their child to learn. Almost all of the charter schools that I have been to have offered classes to their students that include all of the classes from math and english, to digital photography, cosmetology classes, and web design and golf classes. All of these classes are taught by certified teachers, so if a parent has trouble in a certain subject, they can sign their child up for that class, for free (as long as you stay in the budget per child amount which could be from $1000 - $2000 a year. You can also use this money for curriculum or other school supplies). And as I mentioned before, me and my homeschooled siblings were scoring advanced on almost every subject area in the star testing, so clearly my parents were doing as good, if not better, than most teachers. Yes, there is the occasional parent that doesn't take their child's education very seriously, but there are teachers in schools that feel the same way about their students. I know because my brother had a teacher like that in public school. One of the last points that the speaker makes is the need for parental involvement for the student success, I totally agree with that point since the main reason that my parents homeschooled me was to be more involved in my education and my life.

Monroes Motivation Sequence

Monroes Motivated Sequence is a series of six steps that are used to help persuade the audience and stir them to action. The first part of Monroes Motivation Sequence is using a great attention getter, like a shocking statistic or a story that will grab the hearts of the audience so they are hooked on the topic and want to hear more. After you have their attention, you want to give proof of the problem existing using statistics or facts. Now you will have the audience wondering what they can do to fix the problem, so listing some possible solutions is the next step. Then explain what will happen if these solutions aren't initiated, and how the solutions will make the problem better. The next step is then listing some actions that the audience can do personally. And finally, review the main points and conclude the speech so that the audience will leave with those main points on their mind. Although I think that this is a good speech organizational pattern, I think the topic that I will be doing for my persuasion speech would do a little better with the problem-solution pattern since I will be using a lot of statistical information.