Discuss the strategies the speaker used to begin and end the speech. Use the concepts from your readings to describe what the speaker did with his or her time and words.

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This week, your discussion is about the elements that hold a speech together, as well as how counterarguments play a role in each presentation that you present. No matter what the specific content of the speech, and no matter how the context in which you speak constrains how you express your ideas, you need to be able to catch your audience’s attention when you begin the speech, you need to hold that attention during the speech as you lead your audience through the steps of your reasoning, and you need to move your audience toward the conclusions you’re asking them to draw just before you disengage with them and end the speech.

For this discussion, find good speech online and watch it, preferably more than once. The speech may be delivered by a professional speaker or a novice, but it must be delivered to a live audience, and it must not have been edited–in short, it must be an actual speech, rather than a produced video.  You may want to find a site like Americanrhetoric.com or TED.com for good examples.

1. In your initial post:

  • Provide a link to the speech and a citation for it.
  • Discuss the strategies the speaker used to begin and end the speech. Use the concepts from your readings to describe what the speaker did with his or her time and words. Cite every outside source you use, including your readings.
  • Identify the main points of the speech and explain how you recognized them.  How did the speaker show the relationship between one point and the next as he or she moved between them?
  • Identify three legitimate counterarguments, critiques, or questions that an audience might pose in opposition to the speech that you watched. Briefly explain how the speaker might respond to each counterargument.