A Live Speech by Matthew Greene - Assignment Example

14 December Assignment I attended a speech given by one of the at a college seminar earlier this month. The speaker was Mr. Matthew Greene from a reputed college in the city and he spoke about the effect of social networking websites on the grades of college level students. The speech was both informative as well as persuasive because it contained informative matter like statistics and facts regarding the use of these websites as well as egged on a debate among people in the audience regarding whether or not college students’ grades were affected adversely because of excessive use of social networking websites. The speaker had a concise outline to his speech which he gave beforehand so that the audience knew the areas that he was going to be dealing with; these included an introduction to social networking and the impact that it has on college life, the various pros and cons of social networking websites ranging from productivity among students, popularity and medium of communication to assisting in extracurricular activities. Finally, a counter argument was also presented to give the speech a moot point and help the audience decide for themselves rather than sway them into thinking on one track of the topic. Most of the audience included students from various high schools and colleges around the city because it was an event conducted by a few colleges around the city for both high school as well as college level students. The speaker had a very strong thesis statement because of the fact that it centred around the entire speech very well. The statement that he made was ‘Social media websites have been thus affecting school and college students’ grades because students end up spending more time on websites rather than studying.’ He was a very good speaker because of the reason that he was continuously engaging in conversation with the audience by making excellent eye contact with everyone as well as asking questions that helped people relate with what he was talking about. A few members of the audience were asked how they spent their day, and they replied by stating that they spend their hours after school or college in front of the computer, on websites like Twitter and Face book. These websites take up all their time because the new generation is obsessed with documenting their every thought on the internet. Moreover, they like checking into places on their Face book, updating their status and spend hours on a single photograph that someone would have tagged them on, commenting. All these activities eat up into their study time and they fail to get good grades or concentrate in the classroom due to being so hooked on to these websites all the time. The speaker also asked people to raise their hands to questions relating to the use of various websites, number of hours spent on them, and whether it has helped them gain popularity among their peers or not. An overview of the speech was given in the form of a listed outline at the very beginning as mentioned earlier, and thus people were prepared for the speaker. Moreover, this also added to their interest because the crowd, as a young generation group, was hard to please and the speaker was able to grab their attention easily by talking about Face book and Twitter and other such websites that find common interest among the youth today. People were thus able to easily anticipate the kind of questions that would be asked; the speaker used a presentation in the form of a power point to display a few posters that depicted statistics of the number of people in college using social networking websites and how the same either helped or hindered their daily lives and college grades. The audience found this very interesting and from the speaker’s point of view as well it was an excellent method of catching people’s attention easily rather than making them listen to his thoughts for the entire course of the speech. He talked about how the social network is a wonderful place to be for every individual in the world today because it provides updates from near and dear ones, assists in communicating with people living far away in remote areas of the world and also helps people to entertain themselves and keep busy. He then said that that social network has begun to have an adverse effect on the lives of students as well as professionals at the workplace because it has been eating into their work time and that many teachers have argued that their students fail to finish their work on time because of being hooked onto the internet and on social network sites like Face book and Twitter. The sources used were very credible because on the presentation itself he had cited them and he also mentioned that he had retrieved his sources after a well done research from many reputed newspapers, journals as well as websites and books. The speech well reflected the overview that was provided and the speaker was able to manage the crowd excellently; he thus looked like someone that had enough experience in talking to large groups and was comfortable with addressing people and helping them understand the issue that he represented. The links that tied the speech were the various points of argumentation that he brought forth relating to how college grades were affected and how they were helped by the use of social networking websites. Towards the end of the speech, he also provided a few counter arguments to help the audience come to a conclusion regarding their stance on the topic. He did so by telling the audience how his views should not affect another’s and asked people if he had left out any important points to discuss. The speech was thus very interactive and involved participation by the audience. To conclude, he summarized the gist of the entire speech and even asked members of the audience to do so for him, according to their point of view. His speech was overall very effective because it covered every area that could have been discussed regarding the topic. However, one downside of the speech was that in the middle, the speaker was getting a bit over dramatic and made the audience laugh while delivering information of serious concern. By this I mean that his voice modulation was good, however in some areas, while he was talking about the statistics, he tended to go a bit overboard. Nonetheless, the audience looked very happy and energized towards the end of his speech because of the speaker’s ability to stick to the intended framework of the topic and not stray from the same. The audience seemed to enjoy the delivery of his speech and I do not think that many people were distracted by his voice modulations and dramatic expressions. The intended message was quite clear and most people understood how college grades were affected by excessive use of social networking websites. This helped to create an impact on a lot of people who promised to seriously cut down on the number of useless hours that they spend ambling on these websites and instead use the same to do something productive. One thing that I did not like about the speech was that the speaker failed to provide solutions regarding how one can easily cut down on hours on the internet and use them instead. Providing these, in my opinion, would have made his argument not only stronger but would also have given people a direct impetus to understand how to use the hours better. This would have immediately made an impact on people, helping them make a mental note to bring about a change in their lives so that they are able to ensure higher college grades and focus better on their work and education rather than waste time. According to me, the speech was very interesting because it highlighted the pros as well as the cons of the addiction to social networking websites that people have today. This is mostly related to students and as one, I was extremely interested in listening to the points that the speaker was trying to make. Moreover, since the audience largely consisted of a group of people that are extremely internet savvy and belong to a high school and college crowd, an immediate connection was formed between the speaker and the people. For me, many parts of the speech have been imprinted in my mind because of the excellent use of argumentation from one point to another that the speaker made, which was the highlight of the speech for me. The speaker could however make a few changes in the manner of his delivery so as to help people understand the serious issues that he discussed. This can be done by practicing voice modulation better, in my opinion. Otherwise, I enjoyed the speech thoroughly and I do not think that he was missing any element because he was well prepared and confident. Read More

 

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