Two Poems I Enjoyed

My Take on This Week's Monologues

Hello Everyone!

This past week, during my public speaking class, we were working on presenting monologues. We had to find a monologue, memorize it, and then present it to the whole class with diction and articulation, and all those things I talked about in my previous blog post. We had to post ours on our blogs so if you want to see it, scroll down a little more (after you finish reading). Everyone had to listen to everyone else's and give feedback and I think that giving feedback to others and received others' feedback really helped my performance. Personally, I chose a monologue from the movie Ratatouille, when the critic tastes foods and writes a review about it the next day.

One monologue that I particularly liked was that of My. Her monologue was about a woman who had turned to hurting people because of how the ones that she cared about the most didn't care about her in the same way. My really got into the character of this woman who didn't want to be evil. Her expressions and the words she emphasized were perfect for her character. Another thing I liked was that she stepped forward one step for each person that she killed. She kept my attention throughout her monologue because of the fact that she embodied the character so much. You could tell that she really memorized the lines and understood how to speak them effectively. In conclusion, what makes a monologue successful is that the speaker has to really understand the person who they are trying to speak as and deliver their monologue with clearly and fluently.

On the other hand, my monologue wasn't as good as My's, but I believe that it was successful. I memorized most of the lines, even if I needed someone to start the sentence. One thing I believe I did well was that, the words I did remember were clear and easy to understand because of my good diction and articulation. Most words were pronounced clearly and sharply. One thing that I thought I should, improve on is that I thought that I could add more emotion to the piece especially towards the end when the speaker is so impressed with the food. I think that one thing that I improved on during the learning process was the spacing and pausing of the words and the sentences. This helped the audience be able to understand me better. If I had had more time, I would have definitely worked on adding more emotion to parts that needed it. The act of a critic was hard for me to embody and really represent.

Thanks for reading and see you next week!

My Public Speaking Monologue

http://youtu.be/mLHFvMt-sTM

A Few New Discoveries

Hello Everyone!

How was your week? How was school? Work? Play? My week consisted of going to school, going to volleyball practice, doing homework, eating, and most importantly, sleeping! ;)

Look, I promised you guys that if I found out why I'm blogging my 'Public Speaking' class, I would tell you. My teacher wrote down the answer on my rubric and even brought it up in class. She says, "The skills you will practice in written communication (blogging) will carry over to oral communication and performance." This means that if I talk well through my blog, I'll soon become a better public speaker. (Or so she says).

This week, I will teach you guys some of the things that I learned during the my Public Speaking classes. By the end of the this, maybe I'll interest you to take a speaking class yourself.

First, we learned about articulation and diction, which is the way a speaker would pronounce the words so the listeners could understand them well. This would be done by making sure that certain letters, like t, are pronounced well. This is important because we've all listened to that one teacher that is never understandable. Because you can never understand the teacher, learning is harder in that subject, as well as your interest in that subject goes down.

Another important pair is audience and purpose. Audience is who you're are speaking to, and purpose is why you're speaking to them. These two concepts go hand-in-hand because your speech could change based who and why you're speaking. We did this activity in class one day where we had to write tow paragraphs. One to our parents trying to convince them to let us go on a school trip to Puerto Rico, and a second trying to convince your best friend to go on the same trip. We learned that our language was really different. When it was our parents, we were formal and stated reasons such as, 'educational' and 'constant supervision' while when we were talk to our friends, we were much more casual and said reasons such as 'lots of fun' and 'no parents.'

A third group of important terms include projection and delivery. These words talk about how you present your speech. Projection is making sure that you're facing the audience with good posture to make sure that the guy in the last row can hear you're words clearly. Delivery is if you make an accent or the expressions on your face or where your arms and legs. Both of these things are so important because if they are done wrong can be distracting to the audience.

I hope you learned something through this preview to public speaking. As many people know, public speaking is a skill that everyone should master because it is necessary in all occupations. From doctors, to truck drivers, everyone needs to speak. So next you have a choice, take the public speaking class. . . You never know what you might learn!

 

Three Songs & Three Goals

Hi Everyone!
My name is Nadya and I'm going to be very honest with you: I've never done something like this before. And I wasn't planning on ever doing something like this.

So, here's the story. This semester, I'm taking a Public Speaking class and as an assignment, I have to keep a blog. Even though I don't understand why or how this helps me speak, I'll go with it. (If I ever find out why I'm doing this, I'll let you guys know ;)

For my first blog post, I'm going to choose three songs that represent me and my life as well as some of my goals for this so-called 'public speaking' class.

Song Number One: Hall of Fame by The Script
http://youtu.be/mk48xRzuNvA

This song really blows me away for a few reasons. Firstly, the topic. Nowadays all the songs on the radio are about love, or some other sappy topic. This is about something that all people can relate to. I mean, who doesn't want to be in the Hall of Fame. This song really empowers me as well with the strong beat and understandable lyrics that just make you wanna sing along. (Don't worry, I've done it too...). This song represents me in that of my dreams. Now, I don't know if I necessarily want to be in an actual hall of fame, but I do want to be known for whatever I plan to do in the future. I want to accomplish my dreams and go above and beyond with everything else.

Song Number Two: Bol Chuidyan
http://youtu.be/i1871tJgCT4

You've probably never heard of this song by the title. If you actually watched the video before reading this, you probably didn't understand it either. That's because it's in Hindi, the main language of India. This brings me to my culture. Although, I am an American citizen, I am deep-rooted in my heritage as I am from India. This song is from a movie that I have watching many, many times and I will watch it many more times. It represents my past, and my culture. I am blessed to be Indian, and so thankful that I am. It has taught me so many things, and it will continue to for the rest of my life.

Song Number Three: Brave by Sara Bareilles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyAfjUHlFSM

Personally, I really love  the message in this song. It's about how someone wants to see the real person inside someone.   I connect with this song so much because I'd like to see the real person inside everyone I meet. I'd love to have this whole world be nonjudgmental, but that's just human nature, I guess. This relates to me because I try to make sure to be the of person that people can trust and want to be around. I want to make sure no has to be brave, it just comes naturally. It also reminds me to be whoever I want to be, no matter what others say.



Goals for my Public Speaking class:

Number One: To be able to know how to act and speak when in front of a crowd

Number Two: To look and be more confident when speaking in front of people

Number Three: For this blog to be interesting for others!

A Quote that Struck Me

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. 

–Gloria Steinem