Personal Narrative Speech Evaluations

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to assess public speaking and apply important factors of public speaking to speech evaluations. This assignment is closely tied to specific course objectives. It provides you an opportunity to

1. demonstrate your increased understanding and appreciation of the communication process as it relates to speaker and listener interactions.
2. develop speaking and listening competencies for effective speech composition and delivery;
3. develop critical insight in judging spoken discourse;
4. appreciate how spoken communication is used to critically examine facts, values and policies;
5. respect for ethical codes that govern spoken discourse, such as tolerance for differences of opinion, preference for civility,
6. be willing to test rationally evidence and arguments, development of interpersonal values that open and maintain channels of communication.

One of the primary course objectives calls for you to develop critical insight in judging spoken discourse. By reviewing speeches and engaging in conversations with other students about their speeches you will make significant progress meeting clear course objectives.

Directions

Our aim is to provide a comprehensive list of factors for evaluating our own and other’s speeches later this unit. After the speeches we will evaluate our own presentation and the presentations of at least two classmates.

Part 1: Post Your Factors of Effectiveness

1. Summarize five factors of effective speaking (one paragraph for each factor).
   • Use your textbook, class videos, personal experiences and observations to generate five factors of effective speaking.
   • Place the factor in a heading and the paragraph explaining the factor directly below the heading.
   • Be detailed in your description of the evaluation factors by using the 6-7 Sentence Paragraph format (cite the definitions of key terms!).
   • Examples of factors might include “Uses effective organization with a clear beginning, middle and end” or “Uses voice effectively to speak conversationally.” These examples point to specific speech writing qualities or speech presentation behaviors and are more detailed than simply writing “Is well organized” or “uses delivery well.”
2. Post your summarization on the class discussion forum titled Discussion 04: Personal Narrative Speech Evaluations by clicking the Class Discussion Board link in the course menu.
3. Make sure to follow the detailed instructions for posting on the discussion board found on the Class Discussion Board.
4. NOTE: This discussion forum is a post forum. You have to post your initial response first in order to see all of the posts in the forum.