Chapter 9

This week’s chapter was called Delivering Presentations in Envision. After reading the title of the chapter I instantly thought, Well this my weakest and most dreaded topic in English. Speeches, or just standing in front of crowd of people in general, I instantly freeze. I would have to agree with the statistic that states that most people would die than have to get up in front of a group of people and speak. So as you might be able to tell I have some trouble in this area. That’s probably why I found this chapter a little more interesting than the last two. I have to admit that telling me to look to Obama and other orators as models was weak advice. I did find it interesting how they used Steve Jobs as an example, I always thought it would be so hard to get up during the presentations and not mess up. I did start to think about the various strategies that Steve Jobs used at Mac World each year; maybe his turtleneck was part of his strategy. I liked how the concepts “audience”, “purpose”, and “persona”. I never even thought about those concepts having anything to do with speech. I don’t mind writing speeches or papers, but when it comes to speaking them I’ve always been subpar. I guess this chapter challenged me to form my own strategy. I believe that giving a speech verbally connects more to listeners because the tone of voice, followed by body language, conveys a deeper message to the audience. While I may not be the greatest speaker there is always time to improve.