Blog Explanation Presentation

Darelys Perez

May 23, 2023

   Presentations

    At the beginning of this class, I thought that my nervousness and anxiety while presenting were things that I could not change. This mindset was quickly proven wrong in many ways during our class presentations. Throughout the presentations, my classmates have given me tips and tricks on how to alleviate my nervousness and anxiety while I present. I truly enjoyed listening to all of the presentations and creating my own. I learned a lot of very important information on how to effectively present information to a crowd. As a class, we were all tasked with reading a range of chapters from the textbook and then creating a PowerPoint presentation on the topics. As a group, we needed to make sure we understood the topic to then teach our peers on the subject. As a class, we discussed the ways to prepare for your first presentation, knowing how to effectively select and arrange the connections for your presentation, and all the different types of presentations. I want to talk about my favorite topics.

Selecting A Topic 

This section of the presentation covered the steps involved in selecting a topic for your presentation or speech. As a presenter, we might pick a topic that you are very familiar with, or you might have been given a topic that is new to you. Nonetheless, the choice is yours as to how well you are going to present yourself. You can start by individual brainstorming, categorical brainstorming, or conducting a personal survey; either of these methods of getting your topic is effective. While making a choice for our topic, we have to be careful of the occasion. Some topics are not appropriate for the audience or the occasion. 

Preparing For Your First Presentation

This section of the chapter was one that my group worked on. We covered a lot of topics, such as: making sure you are ready for the worst-case scenario; the reasons people public speak; what topics you should talk about; the foundations of public speaking; the common types of public speaking; searching for a topic; adapting to your audience; the purpose of speech; and many more interesting topics. These topics are essential to preparing for your first-ever presentation and take away the mystery of public speaking. As I said previously, I get super nervous and shaky when I am about to present, just like any regular human. This chapter truly gave me some peace; it showed me how to be ready for my presentation.

My favorite section of this chapter was learning about the different rhetorical devices and how I can use them in my speeches. I enjoyed learning about the origin of rhetorical devices and how the Greeks used them to improve the arguments of their students. I really enjoyed learning about how to use an outline effectively to better understand and present my presentations and speeches. One of my favorite outlines that was shown was:  This outline shows an easy way to plan out your speech or even presentation very well. It shows that you understood the concept that you are going to speak about.

My other teammates explained what a thesis statement is and how it can help you be less nervous about presenting. A thesis statement is one sentence that forecasts the rest of your speech. This is such an essential part of your speech because it gives it purpose and makes everything flow very smoothly. They gave various examples that helped everyone understand what a thesis statement is and its importance. My team did a wonderful job of explaining chapters 1–4, and I am not just saying that because They were all super confident on the topic and knew what they were talking about.

Selecting and Arranging Content 

This section that was talked about was super helpful when it came to avoiding plagiarism. As a college student, plagiarism is super common, but not in the way that you expect it to be. Many students, due to a lack of knowledge, commit accidental plagiarism because they are unaware of how to effectively cite their sources. The group that presented this made sure to enforce the consequences that come with plagiarism, even if accidental. 

Not only did they talk about plagiarism, but they also talked about where to find credible sources. I found a good chart showing the various media, and they rank them based on their potential biases. This group really gave me a good idea of how to effectively evaluate and identify appropriate sources to use in my presentation.

Analyzing the Audience

This group made sure that we understood the importance of analyzing the audience. They made sure we understood that we needed to know the demographics and important details of the group that we were speaking to. While we present, we need to watch out for the verbal and nonverbal cues that our audience gives us. Understanding what cues they are giving out will help you have a better understanding of how you are doing in our presentation. Understanding all of these concepts will help you adapt to your audience very well. It would help you make your message appropriate for your audience. This would also help you quickly adjust the message to the knowledge of your audience. Having this skill is super important and crucial to having a well-rounded presentation.

What I Took Away From This

I really enjoyed listening to all of my classmates' presentations about different aspects of speech. I truly learned so much and did not know about all the intricate aspects of speech. All of my classmates did an excellent job presenting their topics; they all sounded very confident in what they were saying. I do have a little bit of feedback in general; some groups looked like they were reading from something off their screen, which makes the audience feel like they did not pay attention. I believe that this time in class helped me become a better speaker and not be as nervous as I normally would have been. Thank you all for the wonderful presentations!