Blog#1 REFLECTION: Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone/Public Speaking

As I entered this online Zoom class today I felt very nervous and mildly anxious about the speech we were assigned for our team group presentation. Public speaking has never been a comfortable action for me, I always tend to be part of just the ones listening or just being my introverted self in some way to not stand out from a crowd or audience. Even though this class name and purpose sound like the beginning of standing outside my comfort zone, I still was expecting the unexpected out of myself while presenting. My plan is to focus on being more conversational and communicative in an extroverted aspect towards people as I progress and go along the way with this speech class and my career’s path going forward. 

From the first class meeting joining a group with complete strangers and not knowing how or what to expect of their work ethic or anything about them in general, having to do a group straight away presentation about “doing a presentation publicly” in front of the entire class was definitely a one of one experience for myself. Going more in-depth and reading about the topic of my assigned chapter for the presentation chapter 16 ”Distance Speaking and Media Appearances” I can say I learned a lot about how to improve my way of talking during this meeting in itself and learned interesting approaches for interactions with the people I talk around with.

Everyone began to introduce themselves and show their parts of the slides, I began to listen to how each and everyone had some sort of nervy or shy voice when speaking at first. I thought to myself from that moment that I wasn’t the only one going through these thoughts of feeling unprepared, no matter how much I had practiced my speech or gone over the slides to read over them.

All the classmates continued to take it upon themselves and give their best for this presentation. From the start, I and everyone else started to learn about how to do a “presentation or speech” itself when it came down to the root of it all, we learned about how to use our language effectively and engage with an audience using proper wording or how distinguish meaning from different cultures but still keep the same definition to the word for everyone in the room, the importance of spoken versus written language and how to guide ourselves when were in the center of the room talking about a topic and keep everyone entertained and engaged with us.

I thought of this book to be a very interesting one since it showed and explained in detail the many things that a person has to overcome, practice, and learn little by little when wanting an audience to follow or just be intact of the speaker is trying to say and how we have to step outside different boundaries of our timid persona or our normal ways of explaining certain things to multiples opposed to explaining something to just one individual. This first chapter dives right into everything you need to know as a beginner speaker like ourselves. As more and more students continued to participate, I found it within myself to let loose and just listen to the topics each one of them was talking about and how they would look in front of everyone while in the meeting. yes, I know it was through a video call meeting but I believe that it still creates the pressure or deep anxiety to be built for most of us as first-time students and speakers. Having the time actually to practice by yourself before class and going over the slides with the group we were assigned brought a tremendous and also more settling type of comfort for each of the team members, specifically for my group, I think we all did a fantastic job since the rehearsal inside of the breakout rooms. When our team was up next on the list and our chapters 13-17 were introduced, we all maintained a calm, direct composure and tried to be ourselves as our great professor told us to do so from the beginning. My group was team number 4 and our first chapter was number 13 “Informative Speaking” which focuses on informative speaking, it shows the speaker the awareness of their audience and knowledge about the topic they are trying to demonstrate. The next chapter 14 slide focused more on “Persuasive Speaking” which plays a big role in public speaking itself since it is the way for the speaker to stay on to become one with the audience utilizing communication influencing people’s beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and values or actions. I think my group teammate in this subject did a fantastic job at describing and going above and beyond about describing this part of the chapter, I liked how she gave and delivered the information by giving examples and comparing and contrasting the differences between persuasive speaking and coercing or manipulating the listener on a subject and how she gave examples front her point of view on how persuasion can be distinguished from practical and issued based persuasion on a practical topic or more of a serious topic, overall a lot of good information was delivered from this one chapter alone. Continuing to the next, chapter 15 “Understanding The Argument” plays an important role in maintaining focus and having credibility and backup information for supporting the audience questions and the claims being provided for the topic that was introduced. Chapter 16 “Distance speaking and Media appearances” was my personal picked chapter from my group. I picked this chapter because I wanted to learn more about what it is to have a well-put-together experience while distance speaking to a group and have a good run in getting my voice out there in front of our class or group with the help of gathered information from the book. It talked about the different technology devices we can use such as any computer or cell phone, how it is becoming a more common way of communication as we modernize in lifestyle, and how to have a well set rounded setup to present ourselves in different circumstances we engage in.

Finally, the last person in my group explained chapter 17 to the class about “Special Occasion and Group Presentations” which to my understanding is what we have learned so far doing this presentation as well. The person in my group did a great job showing the differences between individuals presenting acceptance speeches when being awarded or recognized for accomplishments and special occasion speeches presentations, for example, a wedding or a toast for acknowledgment. The group presentations part of this very last chapter is what caught my most attention since we were involved in a “Group presentation” while performing our speech and all the students were a preeminent example of what it is to be involved in one, as we all picked a topic, divided into different areas of the topic and presented a speech to our audience. I thought this first introduction to public speaking went as planned and will continue to use all this information going forward in my daily life and interactions.