SPC-2608 Group 1 Alejandro Lander Reflection

     To begin this 1000 reflection is really important to analize all the chapters or the presentations that we made on the course, this chapters helped me learning a lot of important things, letting me know that public speaking is not just about standing in front of a group of people and talking. This, is actually a skill made up of smaller parts that if you put them all together they can work perfectly. Looking back at what we covered on the presentations there is a lot of things that are really useful and important at the moment of speaking of doing presentations by itself. At the beginning of the classes I mostly thought being a good speaker meant being confident and knowing what to say. Now I understand that preparation, organization, listening, delivery, credibility and knowing your audience are all important parts of being and effective and good speaker.

    One of the first things I learned was that public speaking is an "evolving art." That idea stayed with me because the way people communicate has been changing a lot over time. Speaking is not just about standing in front of a classroom anymore, which can get you a hard time or maybe get nervous like me. Today, people also gives speeches which knowing how to deliver them is really important but that is a topic for later, people also do presentations, social media it is really famous now also, and other forms of technology that are getting way popular than we thought. We also have access to more information than ever before, which makes it really important to know where information comes from and where can be whether it can be trusted or not. I found the section of literacy really interesting and I also asked myself, "where did this information come from, it is credible?" is something I can use outside of the course. It can help me reading the news, doing research for another class or even just watching something online.

    The chapter that was about building confidence was one of the most important for me or one that actually got my attention. Almost everyone feels nervous when speaking in front of other people in public, or at least I can share that opinion, so it was helpful to learn that this feeling of fear is normal. I also liked learning that nervousness is partly a physical reaction and not simply something that means you are bad at speaking. Strategies such as reframing nervousness as excitement and using breathing exercises before a speech gave me some actual things that I can try. Some of the strategies in this chapter felt a little repetitive because many of them were focused on calming your body and trying to think in a different way or in different things. However, I still think it was really helpful and useful to have different opinions because not every technique will work the same with every person that tries them. 

    The chapter that was about listening was one I did not found very interesting, in my opinion of course, but it ended up being one of the most practical topics. I had never really thought about how much time we spend listening compared with speaking, reading, or even writing. The HURIER model, which includes hearing, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding, showed me that listening is much more complicated than just simply hearing someone's words. I also realized that being a good listener can help you in everyday tasks or moments like conversations, school, and future jobs. The only part that I found kinda difficult was the amount of new vocabulary. Terms like "ethnocentrism" or "defensive communication climate are useful, but there were so many new things and words that sometimes it felt like I was trying to memorize things instead of actually learning how to become a better listener.

    Adapting to the audience is another topic that it catch my attention, it makes sense for me because you can not give the same exact speech to the same group of people. First, you have to think who is the listener, what he already knows, his background, and if he can possibly care about the topic. The four dimensions of the speaker credibility, trustworthiness, dynamism, and sociability were also really helpful to me because they gave me a simple way to think about how an audience sees a speaker. I can see myself using these ideas anytime I need to prepare a presentation because knowing my audience can help me decide what information and examples can be the best ones to include there.

    The chapters about supporting ideas and organizing the speeches were probably the most useful to me in everyday life. Those ones were very helpful for me because they helped me learning the difference between facts, statistics, examples, and testimony showed me that there are different ways to support and idea, and each one can be very useful depending on what I am trying to explain in that moment. I also liked learning about organizational patterns such as chronological, spatial and problem-solution. Before knowing all these new things, I probably organized my thoughts without really having a plan or just saying the first thing that I get into my mind. Learning these patterns showed me that having a clear structure can make a speech much easier for both the speaker and the audience to follow.

    

    Informative and persuasive speaking were also interesting to compare. I learned that persuasion is not simply about talking loudly or trying to convince someone. It can include logos, pathos, ethos, and mythos, which are different types of connecting with the listeners. The chapter about reasoning and fallacies was a little harder to understand for me because there were a lot of different ways or terms with logical errors to remember. However, it was still useful because now I can recognize things like a false dilemma when I see one online, in advertisements or even in arguments.

    Overall, the most valuable parts for me in all these chapters and presentations were the practical skills. I learned how to organize a speech, support my ideas with the right type of evidence, understand my audience, and I am still working on managing the nervousness before speaking but it is part of the process. The parts that I found less useful were the sections that focused heavily on vocabulary and long lists and I could not connect in a big way with those. Even so, those chapters still helped me learn the language needed to describe different and new communication problems. Most importantly, this class changed the way I think about public speaking. I no longer see it as something that people are either naturally good or bad at it. Now, i see it as a skill that can be improved with some practice, preparation and experience. I know I have a lot more things to improve and get better, especially when it comes to confidence and the nervousness of the moment at talking to a big amount of people, but day by day I would try to improve and be better if it is possible.