:mdancza's IPC 205 blog

I did my speech on “3 steps how to be a Canadian”. I am credible because I actually play hockey and hockey players (at least the ones I know, like the ones on the hockey team) they have Canadian-swag. They talk like Canadians and use their vocabulary and such. So I was actually very knowledgeable. And our class seemed it too. Our fellow Detroit peers, knew basically all the Canadian pronunciations because they live right across the river from Canada. But some were singing “O Canada” at the beginning of the speech. It brought tears to my eyes…

A weakness could be was my voice level. Sometimes I spoke loudly, but I got the point across and I really wasn’t shouting or screaming so nobodies ears were ringing or whatnot.  I dont think it was that big of a deal. Actually sometimes you need to change your voice level to make sure everyone’s awake/paying attention and make sure you’re not too monotone…

Strengths are eye contact and using the crowd/audience.  This has been a strength all semester long.  I try to incorporate the audience as much as possible without losing control of my topic.  It makes the speech better and the audience more attentive.  Anytime you can get the audience involved and they enjoy your speech you know you did a good job…

I was on time.  I practiced about 2 times without a stopwatch and such.  I thought my speech would be between 6 or 7 minutes.  My prediction was correct…

The only time I had to use my ‘notecards’ was for the pronunciations.  That was where I wrote on the chalkboard and had the class say the words out loud like we were in first grade again.  I usually never use notecards.  I did have to use notecards for my 2nd speech because it was our first group speech and I did not know the material too well.  If I did the project done in time AND have time to look over it, I don’t need notecards, it’s all in the brain…

My visual aids were phenomenal.  I brought in a hockey stick to demonstrate part 2 which was the hockey wrist shot.  My third part I had Dan volunteer to be put into the Bret Hart’s sharpshooter and my first part was on the chalkboard.  I had a powerpoint to kind of look over things. I added in visuals such as pictures but really didn’t put much info at all on the powerpoint.  I did have some slides with words but they were only there as a backup if there were no chalk for the chalkboard for my pronunciations portion.  Visual aids bring a presentation to life and I did a good job doing so…

All in all, I think it’s about the audience, and when half of the class gave me a standing ovation it felt great.  I felt like I did my job and outstanding at it too.  The audience is whom were are speaking to and relating to and its most important to take them into account as much as possible…

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Personally before the speech started, I was sort of nervous and I thought I would do a bad job because this isn’t one of my strengths, talking about an IPC chapter, I’d rather much do something on the lines of something that interests me like Sports, Movies, etc. I can do improv speeches fairly well, but this one concerned me.

After reading up and studying my material and with very little practice, I walked into the classroom and thought that I might turn on my iPod and listen to some music to pump me up for the speech/calm me down at the same time.  Also engaging in conversation before the class started with classmates that also eased the somewhat butterflies that I originally had.  After calming myself through music and talking to my classmates, I settled down and had confidence that I would do just fine. Funny thing about confidence, you feel like you can do just about anything if you have it…

I believe our group did a fantastic job, I believe the class (those who were paying attention) understood our material and our examples we used. I believe all of us individually did a great job of relaying the information effectly to the class and I also believe it was in the B range, grade wise. The only thing I thought we did bad on was the time, ours was supposed to be 15-20 minutes and it ended up being 11:07, although it wasn’t too short.

My strengths as a speaker are eye contact with the whole crowd/audience and integrating humor and improvisation in the speech. When I mean improvisation I mean, using the crowd into the speech. I took Steve as an example and used himself and his shirt he was wearing (A Detroit Tigers baseball shirt) cause I knew he would like the example I had for our group speech.  My presentational skills are pretty good, I have my strengths and weaknesses, with the strengths overcoming the weaknesses.

We presented as a team very well like I said, I think our group gets along very well actually. We had great flow in our speech, I don’t believe any of us dragged down each other, I believe we did a great job.  My teammates did (I suppose) help out by not messing up.  Maybe if they messed up, I would mess up, but it didn’t happen and if it did, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal anyways.

Areas we can improve on is memorization and speech length.  I think that our next speech will be the best out of all the groups, you’ll see.  Better as a team, there’s really nothing extra we can do in my opinion.  I believe we did excellent, maybe our own little tweaks of our own speech styles but as a group, nothing really.

Overall, I think we did a fantastic job, I don’t think any of us screwed up and I think we deserve a great grade because of it.  As our first speech together as a group, I think we did excellent as I said.

-Matt

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I thought I did really well. I have no clue where it comes from but, I have like an invisible swagger; a cockiness if you will, for speeches now.  Ever since IPC 102, I just do a good job of doing presentations, and this time I didn’t even have my strength, which is powerpoint, to use at my disposal.

“I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum.”

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Class Wednesday was amazing. We talked in groups about what make a good speech on both sides, the person giving the speech and the listener. Our group is basically the best ever.

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Name: Matthew Danczak
From: Akron, Ohio
Standing: Sophomore
Major: Sport Management
Hobbies: Every sport basically (Hockey is all-time fav.), Movies (Michael Mann), Music (Hip-Hop)

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