Anael Benmergui - Post #1

   Anael Benmergui

     Good morning, everybody hope you're all having an amazing day. I'd like to reflect on some ideas that stuck out with me from the presentations. To start I want to mention how much I really enjoyed all of the presentations. Everyone did an awesome job. I love how creative all the power points were it really made a difference in how I understood the information from the chapters. Also, everyone spoke really well, which made it more fun and enjoyable to learn. Every presentation had useful information that we could each apply in our own lives. However, after going back to the recorded classes, and rewatching all of the presentations, I would like to share a few ideas that stuck out to me from each group. 

    I was part of group one, and we were the first group to present. I generally get nervous when I have to speak in public, but I've never done a presentation before in front of the class, so this was way out of my comfort zone. I practiced out loud a few times to feel more prepared for the presentation, and practicing was actually key for my presentation because it helped me make my notes clear, so that I could explain everything better to the class. The best advise I could give to everyone that really helped me the most isn't even to practice; it is to have notes that work for you. My notes were pretty simple, but it was just what I needed to keep myself on track. I wrote down the topics and main points in bold bullet points for each slide. This way if I lost my focus I could see where I was up to. While I was presenting this was very helpful because I caught myself loosing focus a few times when I was nervous, and this way I was able to quickly look at my notes and move onto the next topic. We did a great job with our presentations, and worked well together. I presented the second half of chapter one, and what I learned from my part really stuck with me. Whenever we learned about public speaking in school it was always focused on being a better speaker and what you as the speaker can do to give a better presentation. However, I learned from my part of chapter one that the focus should really be on the audience. To give a good speech the chapter explained we needed to make sure the audience was the main focus, and it explained eight essential elements of giving over a good speech using this method of being audience centered. The essentials are audience, speaker, message, channel, noise, feedback, context, and environment. The main point of this is that if we keep in mind who our audience is and what they care about then it will be a good speech, and also the way we give our speech and the place where it is affects how our message is given over and understood by the audience. I think if we all pay more attention to who our audience is and talk about topics they want to hear about, we will become better speakers and our message will resonate with the audience.

    The next presentation that stuck out to me was the first part of chapter four presented by Cierra. She did a great job explaining and making her presentation interesting. Her power point slides were beautiful. They all had similar colors of forest green and baby blue, and it was easy to follow along because the slides were clear on what to focus on as she spoke. Cierra focused on the idea of knowing the purpose for your speech. She explained the importance of knowing why you are speaking at a certain event. Meaning are you speaking at a special event or are you trying to teach the audience something new. Once you know where you are speaking and the reason for giving the speech, it will be much easier to choose a topic for your speech. Cierra also spoke about other ideas like how to choose your topic after this, but I think if we all take her advise to figure out the purpose of our speech first, it will be much easier to write a great speech in the future.

    From the next presentation, I really enjoyed how everyone spoke, but more specifically I really liked what Lilian did before she started explaining her presentation. She started off by introducing herself and saying the chapters she was presenting as opposed to going straight into explaining the slides. I also really enjoyed how she spoke because she didn't seem nervous at all. She spoke at a normal pace rather then rushing through it to get it over with. My main goal for this class is to get comfortable speaking in public confidently and naturally like that. Lilian spoke about chapters nine and twelve, but I like an idea she spoke about in chapter nine. She mentioned the idea of the Serial Position Effect by Ebbinghaus in 1885. This is the idea that people are more likely to listen to the beginning and end of something, and she said the primacy effect is when the audience is more likely to pay attention to the beginning of a speech. This idea is very useful and applicable to everyone because now that we know our audience is most probably only paying attention to the beginning of our speech, we can prepare by making it very interesting in the beginning to keep the audience more engaged and curious to listen to the rest of the speech. This can even apply to someone trying to explain an idea to their boss by keeping in mind that the beginning of their presentation is the most important part and needs to be very interesting.

    Then lastly from the group four presentation I learned a new tip to make a clearer presentation for the future. They did two introductory slides, and had someone explain the structure of the presentation. The first slide they made had a topic about the main idea of their presentation and all the names of everyone who presented underneath, and the second slide had all the names of everyone who presented with the exact sections of the chapters they were each going to present. This is kind of similar to what Lilian did by introducing herself first and then explaining her part of the chapter. Making these introductory slides or just saying what you will be talking about is a small but useful thing to do when giving over a presentation, so that your audience understands exactly who is talking and what they are talking about. I also enjoyed what Rihab said about the power of an informative speech. She said a good speech that properly explains an idea well has four things. A meaningful message that people care about, the information needs to be accurate and credible for the audience to believe you, it needs to be given over clearly, and it should be specific and limited to few important topics. 

    Using all of these techniques we learned from the presentation I think we can all become great speakers and make great presentations in the future. The project managers Angela and Briana did an amazing job on their own presentations, but even more as leaders. I believe we can all learn from them on what it means to take initiative and accept more responsibility while also balancing their own coursework. All of the slides they made had beautiful designs, which enhanced my learning. As I mentioned before the introduction and conclusion slides are extremely important to clarify what we're learning and summarize what we learned already. They presented these slides with confidence, which helped me listen and understand better. If we apply what we learned from these presentations I am sure we will achieve our personal goals for public speaking. Thanks for reading everyone have the best day!