Sara Valladares Reflection

                                         Public Speaking 

Public speaking has always been something I struggled with but thankfully this class has been helping me improve my public speaking skills. One of my classmates in my group gave amazing tips to perfect your public speaking skills that I would love to share. Some tips I learned was relating to the topic and letting your audience know you what your talking about because you have first hand experience. So for example using your personal experiences as a way to relate to the topic you're talking about. This will make the audience listen to what you have to say. Another tip I learned is relating the topic to the audience this will make then interested and want to listen to the speaker. Having three main ideas so you can cover everything in the time neccessary. You know your audience is listening if they ask questions. All these tips have helped me become way more confident for my next presentation. As someone who gets really anxious talking in public I have no idea about how much these tips really help you. 

I can also say I got more confident knowing how to share my information with others. If the listener is already aware of your topic they are more likely to agree with them. Having humor as a speaker, using sensory aids, organizing your information and rewarding your listeners are all things you can do to share your information in the best way you can. All of these skills I mentioned will help build your confidence while presenting. I tend to get really nervous I forgot what I'm about to say so learning these skills will help you with that. Giving the audience good eye contact is very important as well. Being able to show confidence and match your audiences energy will make it far more enjoyable for them. I don't know about you but I tend to ignore presentations I find boring if the speaker doesn't seem fun or engaging. So always make sure to define, describe, explain and demonstrate to accommodate learning styles. This was one of my favorite topics talked about in my group because it helped become more comfortable talking to an audience.

Avoiding fallacies is a very important subject that I actually shared in my presentation that I found quite interesting. A fallacy is an error in reasoning that weakens an argument. We have name calling where you are categorizing people by slapping a label on them. For example if you call someone a liberal it may be perceived as a slam. 

There is also glittering generality I had no idea what this way at first but I learned that it is a propaganda statement that is designed to connect with audience members by speaking to the beliefs or values that are dear to them. We have the most known one which is bandwagon technique where the speaker is encouraging the listener to do something because everyone in the same values groups is doing it. Circular reasoning you are using two unproven propositions to prove each other. You can try to avoid this by making sure that your assumptions can be proven. You have either/or this fallacy assumes every issue has two opposite positions. You are either for me or are against me Most issues are complicated enough to have multiple points of view. This is another one I never heard of post box fallacy where states that the first event necessarily caused the second when one event happens after another. An example I can give you is saying a black cat crossed my path, and then I got into a car accident. The black cat caused the car accident. 

We also have inductive and deductive which I found really interesting to learn about. In inductive you are assuming the premises are true but it"s probable for the conclusion to be false. The persuader is gathering a series of particular instances to draw an inference. In deductive reasoning it happens when the presenter based her claim on some premise that is generally affirmed by the audience. It also doesn't have to be true just believed by the audience. It is an argument based on major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion. It is important to use critical thinking as well by attacking and questioning the premises on which the persuader bases the argument. 

Something I also learned working on this is reasoning for example arguments in cause and effect that means you have to demonstrate. You have to make sure the cause is linked to the effect and eliminate other possible causes. When you use effect you have to demonstrate that effect and cause are solidly linked and eliminate other possible effects as well. In arguments in sign the best way my peers put it to words is to reason from signs is to reason from multiple signs which leads to better conclusions. Then we have arguments in generalization an example I learned is telling your friend a story about what happened to one one of your friends who traveled to a foreign country on a study aboard trip. In arguments in from parallel case this is similar to reasoning with generalization where you start by using an example story or piece of date. Last one I learned is argument from analogy where you should be careful when comparing and analyze the implications of the comparison. What should the audience conclude from comparing the two things?

One of my peers mentioned not reading as much in your notes when presenting which can start a bad habit. So always making sure to write as little notes and practice presenting over again and knowing your topic really well. Using good grammar, allowing yourself to pause and speak loud and clear. Simple tips that will make you sound more professional when presenting. Making sure you find your topic interesting because if you aren't enjoying it nobody else will either. My peers did an amazing job making sure each topic was interesting for us and easy to understand exactly what they were saying.  I feel like I have more knowledge with public speaking than I did before. I can't wait to keep improving and will take each topic I learned from my peers to improve.