Tasks for the Upcoming Week

Dear students,

I hope you are doing well.

Here is a saying I heard the other day, "The grass is greener where you water it." 
I beleive nothing good happens by itself. On the contrary, everything needs to be cultivated.
Once you start thinking that you can do better, then you begin building something really big and prominent.

With this inspiring idea, I want to introduce you a few tasks for the upcoming week.

1) Complete challenge #3 and post a report in your blog.
2) Come up with a topic for your final persuasive speech. Write down the purpose and set out the objectives. Share your ideas in your blog.

These tasks are due Sunday, October, 28th. 

Have a good week

Challenge #2

Hey guys!

This week's task is to complete challenge #2 and publish a report in your blog.

Enjoy the weekend!

The task is due Sunday, October, 21st. 

Heuristic Methods and Creative Writing

Dear students,

This week we are going to introduce you a few heuristic methods (from the word “Eureka!”) that you can use to create a neat speech.

Go over the activities and complete the tasks in red.

Post the completed tasks in your blogs. 

We hope you will find these techniques helpful and worth using.

These tasks are due Thursday, October, 26th.

The two warm ups we will do, are the "One letter," exercise and the "Random word," exercise:

• One letter

Think about a letter and name as many objects as possible that start with this letter. 

For example, C - computer, course book, case, cucumber you just had for lunch, etc. 

You can play this game with your co-workers, and if everyone thinks of ten words then you're all winners.

Now it is your turn. Pick a letter a write down 10 words.

• Random words 

1. Go to the website https://www.textfixer.com/tools/random-words.php 
2. Generate 5 random words at Random Generator List.
3. Pick a few random words and try and tie them together in the most imaginative way possible. 

Write a paragraph using 5 words generated words. Highlight these words in the text.  

After this, you are ready for the following creative writing prompts:  

I. What if… 

Imagine a problematic situation and think of possible (or impossible) solutions. 

For example, “What if you are in the shower, you have shampoo in your hair, but suddenly the water in the whole building was turned off?” - I’ll melt ice cubes from the fridge in the microwave to rinse my hair. 

Here is another one for you to practice this activity:

What if there were no desks in the classrooms, but only beanbags? Write down 7 ideas.

II. Six Thinking Hats 

To formulate ideas for your speech. First, create a topic sentence, then challenge your brain to think in six different directions. Make notes while considering the following "thinking hats," as points to use in your future speech. 

White thinking hat. This hat covers facts, figures, information needs, and gaps.

Red thinking hat. This hat covers intuition, feelings, and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any need to justify it.

Black thinking hat. This is the hat of judgment and logic. It is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts.

Yellow thinking hat. This is the hat of optimism. Why something will work, and why it will offer benefits.

Green thinking hat. This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, provocations, and changes.

Blue thinking hat. This is the hat of overview, and analysis. In technical terms, you look over your final product and see if it makes sense. 

Use this method to come up with ideas for the speech “How many foreign languages should be taught to students in school?” 

Formulate a topic sentence and simply describe the ideas that each hat helped you to generate. 

Clarifying Your Purpose and Setting Out Clear Objectives

Hi there!

We hope you’re doing well.

This week we are moving towards such a fundamental topic as preparing your speech. This is a pretty broad topic that is why we are going to work on that doing bite-size tutorials and tasks.

We suggest that you go over the course book chapter (chapter 3) and tutorials in this blog, then complete the tasks after each tutorial and post them in your blogs. 

Please, email Yulia if you have any questions or concerns about the tasks (irychkov@go.olemiss.edu).

These tasks are due Thursday, October 18th.

Best of luck

CLARIFYING YOUR PURPOSE

The main idea of preparing a speech can be stated this way: Don’t start right from the outline.
Most of great writers and speakers point out the importance of thinking over the topic and clarifying the purpose first.

In chapter 3.1. Clarifying Your Purpose in your course books, you are given the following questions to ask yourself before starting a speech:

- Why should I want to talk about this?
- Why should anybody want to listen to me?
- What single message would I want to put across?
- What need in the audience do I want to have satisfied when I have finished speaking?
- When they all walk away what state would I like them to leave in?

Stop for a moment and go over these questions. They may seem basic but you will be surprised how answering these questions helps not only state the purpose of your talk but also give you some ideas on how to structure your speech and what points are crucial to mention.

TASK 1. 
Imagine you were asked to give a speech on the following topics. Consider the Wh-questions mentioned above to clarify the purpose of each speech. Write down your answers to each question. 

Speech 1. 
You are a primary school teacher. You should give a speech to your third graders on the following topic: “Why children should listen to their parents.”

Speech 2. 
You are working as a team leader in a summer language camp with high school students from the whole region. On the second day, you are noticing that some guys and girls hesitate to meet new people or make friends within the team. You decide to take action and give a talk to your team stating “You will learn most from friends that are different from you.”

Speech 3. 
You are taking part at 2018 World Champion of Public Speaking “Toastmasters” and you are going to give a speech “Embarrassing moments make you stronger.”


SETTING OUT CLEAR, MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES

Once you figured out the purpose of your speech, make sure you set out clear objectives. A goal or purpose may be fairly general, but an objective needs to be specific. In other words, it needs to be measurable and (preferably) quantifiable as well. You might want your audience to buy a product, change their lifestyle, etc. And you would also like to inspire each of them a little.

TASK 2. 
Watch the following performances and identify the possible objectives each speaker has set. 
1. Ken Robinson “Bring on the learning revolution!” at TED2010 https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution
2. Zifang Su “Turn around”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKVTzuvjEpg
3. Matthew McConaughey – winner’s speech at the 86th Oscars in 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD2cVhC-63I 

Conquering Stage Fright

Dear students,

We hope you are doing well.

This week our goal is to combat stage fright (at least start doing it). This is why we are asking you to do the following activities:

1) Challenge yourself
Make a list of 10 social things that for some reason you find challenging to do. For example, “Go to a social event with a friend and initiate a conversation with one person you don’t know,” or “When riding a bus, sit down next to a passenger and say ‘What a DAY!’” It is challenging, but it is definitely worth it. And after all, it is fun too.

Then complete one of them and post a report in your blog. You may want to share some evidences as well, such as photos or videos, for example.

2) Feel your body
Read p.115 in your course book and think about your physiological reactions while feeling stage fright. Choose one and describe it in your blog.

3) Choose the strategy
Read p.118 in your course book and pick three recommendations how to overcome stage fright. Describe these strategies in your blog and tell how you are going to use them.

Have a good rest of the week.

This task is due October, 15th. 

Speech Evaluation Tasks

Hello guys,

Another week - another challenging activities on public speaking craft for you.

1. Evaluate 3 persuasives speeches in your course book (pp. 100-104) using chart 10.3 Speech Content. Publish the analysis in your blog.

2. Enjoy watching Top 3 speeches from the "Toastmakers contest 2016", then choose one you like the most and evaluate it using the chart 10.2. Public Speaking Evaluation Chart. Please, make sure you provide examples from the speech and share your impressions on that. Publish the analysis in your blog.

3. Together with you classmates, come up with your own evaluating chart that you are going to use for further in-class performances. Starting with Arina, you all are going to give a speech and evaluate it all together using that chart.

Have a great week

These tasks are due October, 8th.