Storr Comm 210 - Midterm Exam

Direction

"In conclusion." Should not sound like an extension of last main point/body.

Communication Apprehension

A broad-based fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons.

What is the benefit and limitation of a demographic analysis?

A demographic analysis can provide useful information about the probable beliefs, attitudes, and values of the listeners as well as their interests, experiences, and levels of knowledge. A demographic analysis may lead to dangerous stereotyping if a speaker assumes that all members of a particular category are identical or if the speaker's preconceptions about members of a category are incorrect or demeaning.

How can you build interest into your speech?

A reference, audience participation, story, startling statement.

Analysis of the Situation and Occasion

A speaker needs to take into account the size of the audience, the characteristics of the physical environment, and the nature of the speaking occasion. As the size of the audience increases, presentations generally increase in formality. During your speech preparation, plan the ways you will capitalize on the strengths or opportunities of the environment. During your analysis of the occasion determine the audience's expectations and the likely impact of the events that will precede and follow your presentation.

Impromptu Speaking

A type of public speaking in which the speaker has little or no time to prepare a speech.

Spatial Order

Arranges ideas according to location or geography. Provides a way to examine structures, such as buildings and objects. Provides a way to analyze conditions in relevant locations. May be combined with chronological order to explain geographical development or migration over time.

Introduction

A well-constructed introduction helps a speaker accomplish the specific purpose of his or her presentation. Your first task in communicating is to get your listeners to focus their attention on you as the source of the message. Another important function of the speech introduction is to strengthen the audience's interest in the topic and involvement in the presentation. A third function of the introduction is to strengthen the speaker's credibility. A fourth function of the introduction is to prepare the audience for the content of the body of the speech. Without being abrupt, a speaker should accomplish the functions of an introduction in as short a time as possible. You must adapt your introduction to the unique nature of your purpose, audience, and occasion. Avoid common weaknesses in speech introductions. Write introduction last. Be succinct, but not too succinct (20%). Avoid delivery errors.

The BAV System

Accounts for the way we think, feel, and behave. The way individuals feel toward something predicts the way they will behave toward it. Attitude - a person's emotional reaction to an idea, object, person, or behavior. Belief - that which an individual considers to be a fact, or statement, about reality. Values - our general rules for living (instrumental values) and our basic goals in life (terminal values).

Source-Message-Channel-Receiver Model (SMCR)

Advanced by David Berlo, has served as a useful way to view the communication process. The model helps us to focus on the elements that must be operating effectively for communication to occur. The model helps us identify the location of potential barriers to effective communication. More comprehensive models also include as elements: feedback, noise, and communication context.

Signposts

Alert the listeners to a new idea or point. They are usually numbers but can include words such as "next" and "finally" that express sequence. Indicate exactly where the speaker is in the presentation.

Reasons why we outline speeches.

An outline provides a concrete tool to plan and deliver an effective presentation. It helps you organize your ideas to achieve your desire results. Helps you refine the phrasing of your key ideas to promote clarity and retention. Helps you identify where you need to develop and support your ideas. Helps you identify where you need to help the listener by providing transitions. Helps you prepare useful speaking notes. Helps the instructor understand your thinking processes and offer suggestions for improvement. Helps the instructor analyze the nature and assess the quality of your preparation.

Topical Order

Arranges ideas into appropriate categories. Some say it is the one we use when nothing else works. When you are dealing with problems or policies, you might consider their implications in terms of common values of the audience. Then you may select the topical areas of importance to your specific listeners. Once you have chosen topics or categories, you may further order them in more precise ways.

How is understanding others' frame of reference helpful in the message construction process?

As a speaker, understanding the frames of reference of your listeners will allow you to adapt your message for high levels of clarity and/or persuasive impact. As a listener, attempting to understand the way the speaker's frame of reference may differ from your own can help you to understand better the speaker and your reaction to the speaker.

Interest

Attention getting device. Statistics. Shocking statements. Quotations. Stories.

Stress

Base cause is perceived lack of interpersonal/audience support.

Observe Nonverbal Cues

Because the majority of the social meaning of a message comes nonverbally, a good listener must "read between the lines." A facial expression, a pause, a vocal stress on a word, a change in rate or pitch, movement forward, a gesture, and other nonverbal cues are as important as the words the speaker uses.

Reactions to Communication Apprehension - BASICS

Behavioral-based. Affect. Sensation. Imagery. Cognition. Stress.

Facial Expression

Bodily element of delivery. As with every other element of effective delivery, the speaker's facial expression should reflect the meaning of the message and help establish an appropriate relationship with the audience.

Eye Contact

Bodily element of delivery. Most audience members (and importantly, most speech instructors) considers effective eye contact an important asset in presentations. Eye contact not only enhances your ability to create a more favorable image but also provides you with important feedback.

Movement

Bodily element of delivery. Purposeful movement during a presentation can help you to hold an audience's attention through variety, to emphasize important ideas, to make your relationship with the audience more personal, or to signal major transitions in your speech.

Gestures

Bodily element of delivery. Should reinforce your message. Most people gesture naturally in conversation, and this characteristic should be enhanced - not suppressed - in public speaking situations.

Posture

Bodily element of delivery. The way you stand (or sit) before, during, and after a presentation will influence the perceptions of your listeners.

Receiver

Brings to the communication situation all of his or her communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, social system, and culture. They decode, or translate, the source's message, attaching meaning and understanding to the speakers (verbal and nonverbal) message. When the source and receiver differ significantly in their frame of reference, the decoding process is likely to result in messages different from the ones intended. While decoding, or processing the message, the receiver then becomes the source of a new message by providing feedback.

Need

Build in significance and relevance to the audience. Avoid "this is important to you because..." Avoid tangental relations. Use sources. (Reestablish need in the conclusion).

Note-Taking

Can help you listen and remember more effectively. The use of additional senses may help you to retain material. Your summary process structures your thinking and gives you a concrete product of the listening process. In most public speaking situations, note-taking is appropriate and valuable.

Ways to Overcome Communication Apprehension

Cognitive restructuring (coping statements and change of mindset). Systematic desensitization (slow exposure). Visualization (mental rehearsal script). Skills-training.

Competent Communication

Communication with others that is perceived to be both effective and appropriate in a given context.

Effectiveness and appropriateness with regard to competent communication.

Communication with others that is perceived to be both effective and appropriate is known as competent communication. Appropriateness depends on who, communicates what message, to whom, through what channel, as well as why a message is sent, and when.

Chronological Order

Considers ideas over time. Usually, we start with events or conditions that happened the longest ago and trace their development to more recent events or conditions. Occasionally, a presenter begins with the most recent events and describes the events which happened earlier.

Internal Reviews

Cues the audience that the main points were said and now being reviewed.

Extemporaneous Speaking

Delivering a well-developed, well-organized, carefully rehearsed speech without having memorized exact wording.

Demographic Analysis

Demographic data provides statistics about the composition of the audience in terms of a variety of social categories: gender, age, educational level, occupational experiences, economic class, religion, regional background, and ethnicity.

D.O.N.E.

Direction. Overview. Need. Excitement.

Mr. Storr said, "We called for delivery and you gave us carryout." What was the point of this comment? What did he mean?

During the delivery, be careful to not make the audience have to do more to understand your speech than you are doing to help them understand. Speak to the audience, not at them.

Personal Appearance

Environmental and situational element. A key consideration in the delivery of a speech is the appearance of the speaker. Within the first few seconds after observers look at you, they will come to a variety of conclusions about you simply based on your appearance.

Time

Environmental and situational element. Audiences vary considerably in their expectations regarding "proper" use of time. Some situations call for rigid adherence to a known schedule for starting and ending. Other situations are more flexible. You should follow some general rules of thumb regarding time and public speaking.

Physical Environment

Environmental and situational element. Numerous characteristics of the location can influence the effectiveness of a presentation. Consider ways to make the environment as conductive to your goals as possible.

Amplification

Environmental and situational element. Speakers myst be prepared for situations that require use of a microphone.

Concentration

Essential to active listening. When you notice your attention wandering, you can refocus on the message in appropriate ways. We must concentrate on the intended messages and their potential meanings.

Casual Order

Examines the causes and effects of a phenomenon or a problem. Examining effects first, then their probable causes, is useful in understanding problems or accounting for historical events. Examining existing causes first and then their probably effects is useful in predicting the future.

Sensation

Excessive activation, physiological.

Problem-Solution Order

Explains the nature of a problem and the way to solve it.

What are the different methods of delivery?

Extemporaneous speaking. Impromptu speaking. Speaking from manuscript. Speaking from memory.

Reliability

Give credibility statement/sometimes implied.

What is the difference between listening and hearing?

Hearing refers to the physiological process of detecting the frequencies, duration, and volume of sound waves. Listening refers to the psychological process of attaching meaning to the sound waves we detect.

Listening for Evaluation

Important to your functioning effectively and responsibly. In this case, you evaluate the truth or falsity of the message. Evaluative listening is critical and discriminative listening. In this case, you do no simply accept everything the speaker says.

Listening for Pleasure

In this case you are not worried about solving the problems of the world or even the problems of your own life.

I.N.T.R.O.

Interest. Need. Topic. Reliability. Overview.

What are the different levels of communication?

Intrapersonal communication. Interpersonal communication. Group communication. Public communication. Mass-media communication.

Topic

Introduce topic and thesis.

Psychological Audience Analysis

Involves considering the impact of beliefs, attitudes, and values on the behavior of listeners. BAV system.

Principles of Competent Communication

KSMJ - Knowledge, skill, motivation, and judgement.

Behavioral-Based

Knowledge and skills.

Listen for Ideas

Listening for main points can be a helpful way to improve listening. Sometimes you may become so engrossed in examples and details that you fail to see the overall picture of the speech. By listening for ideas, you will come away from the speech with the major concepts.

Preview-Review

Makes listening more effective. By learning and thinking about the topic in advance, you preview or prepare for the listening situation. Anticipation and thought about the upcoming communication event may be helpful. Review is important to help you synthesize and remember a message from a listening situation.

Affect

Moods and strong feelings.

Excitement

Movie clincher. Avoid statements such as "That's it" and "I hope you all have learned a bit about..."

Cognition

Negative ideas without pictures.

Imagery

Negative mental pictures.

Passive Listening

Occurs when you don't exert effort in the listening process, but just let the messages "wash over" you.

Selective Listening

Occurs when you select out or choose to pay attention to some things while ignoring others.

Public Communication

One person communicating face-to-face with an audience. The size of the audience may vary, but the interaction between speaker and audience is more limited than in the previous levels of communication.

Self-Centered Speaker

Only takes their interests and experiences into account when constructing and presenting. Only focus on issues that are interesting to them. Lack an understanding of diversity. Assume everyone has had the same experiences.

Interpersonal Communication

Or dyadic communication, occurs between two people. Brief exchanges between strangers, conversations between friends, ongoing discussions with a significant other all fall into this category.

Mass-Mediated Communication

Or mass communication for short, is the communication which takes place over some form of technology because the audience is so large that its members cannot be grouped together in one place. Newspapers, television, and the Internet are all examples of mass communication. A speaker does not have direct access to the audience and the audience's feedback is usually delayed.

Motivated Sequence

Organizes the entire speech. Useful when your purpose is persuasive. It also may be used when your purpose is informative, especially when trying to encourage your listeners to use the material you are teaching. Presents the message in five steps: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action.

Different Types of Listening

Passive listening. Selective listening. Listening for pleasure. Listening as therapy. Listening for comprehension. Listening for evaluation.

What are the three types of audience analysis?

Psychological audience analysis. Demographic analysis. Analysis of the situation and occasion.

Intrapersonal Communication

Refers to the communication you have with yourself. Your thoughts, your self-talk, your recognition of your own feelings and attitudes.

Channel

Refers to the means by which the message gets from the sender to the receiver. Some theorists conceptualize the channels as one's senses. Although each person may use them differently, each of us who is not sensorially impaired communicates through all five sense: sound, sight, touch, smell, and taste. Other theorists consider channels as the technology used to deliver the message. The channel is the medium which carries the message from source to receiver. Communication is likely to be more effective if multiple sense are involved and the medium has the capability to convey the intended meaning.

Frame of Reference

Refers to the way you view your world. Consists of all that you bring internally to the communication situation: your beliefs, attitudes and values; your memory of experiences; your cultural background; your stereotypes and expectations; your self-concept; your feelings and level of stress; your thinking patterns; and other psychological factors. It is your structure for encoding and decoding messages.

Audience-Centered Speaker

Take their audience into consideration when preparing. Consider what the audience wants/needs to hear. Focus on how relatable their speech will be and what the audience will take away. Focus on audience when speaking.

Overview

Tell audience what you will cover in your presentation. (Review in conclusion).

Who determines competent communication?

The audience.

Dance's Helical Model

The bottom of the helix is small. As the helix moves upward it becomes larger. But movement up the helix is slow - a process of circular, back-and-forth motion. In the beginning, communicators share but a small portion of themselves in their relationships. Through a slow process of give and take, their relationships develop as, little by little, they commit more of themselves. This model helps us to remember that the communication process is ever-changing, circular, expanding, and building upon the past.

Conclusion

The conclusion may provide your last chance to have an effect on the audience. Often, a single closing technique can accomplish more than one of the three major goals of a conclusion. The conclusion should refocus attention on the specific purpose of the presentation. The conclusion provides your last chance to create a mode or emotional response in your audience consistent with your purpose. An effective conclusion should create a sense of finality or completion. Your specific purpose should guide the way you accomplish the three goals of a conclusion. "End with a bang, not a whimper." Bring it full-circle - offer psychological closure. Slow down, step away, issue of rate on delivery.

Thesis

The essence of the speech, also called the central idea, that is the main idea the audience should agree with or understand at the end of the speech.

Listening as Therapy

The form you use when a friend has a problem and needs to talk. The friend may ask for advice, but really needs for you to help her or him think through a situation.

General Purpose Statement

The general purposes of speaking are to inform, persuade, and entertain. Your general purpose will remind you to use techniques best suited to your general purpose.

Internal Previews

The speaker may follow up an internal summary with a statement indicating the way she or he will approach the next part of the speech.

Primacy and Recency

The idea that an audience will most remember what you said first and last. You should use a story for your attention-getting device as stories tend to be the most creative and effective way to gain the attention of the audience.

Interaction

The interactive process can be essential in listening effectively. Lack of direct interaction causes serious problems in understanding because of the lack of feedback. When you are in a large audience you can increase the interaction and the accuracy of the sending and receiving process.

Listening for Comprehension

The kind of listening you do in class while you listen seriously to the professor's lecture. Actually, it is the kind of listening you should do, but may or may not do.

Specific Purpose

The specific purpose of your speech is the response you desire from the listeners. Phrase your specific purpose in terms of the behavior you desire from your audience. Each choice you make should promote the specific purpose of the presentation.

What are the organizational patterns for informative speaking?

Topical order. Chronological order. Spatial order. Causal order.

Four Types of Communication Apprehension

Trait-like (hereditary?), context-based (mediums/channels), audience-based, situational (specific situations).

Understand why transitions are important and how effective transitions help the listener.

Transitions link together the parts of a message. The purpose of a transition is to help the audience move as smoothly as possible from one point or section to another. Effective transitions help the listener to remember and understand ideas and contribute to variety, interest, and a sense of steady progress. May be nonverbal as well as verbal (pause, movement, gesture). The transitions between ideas may take the form of words, phrases, and sentences, or parts of sentences. Simple phrases also can help the listener understand the relationships among your ideas. Often sentences or clauses best express a movement in ideas.

Source

Transmits a message through a channel to a receiver. They bring to the communication event their communication skills, their attitudes, their knowledge, the social systems to which they belong, and their cultures. It encodes, or creates, the message by putting ideas into words and actions. An effective source encodes messages in a way that's appropriate for the intended receiver(s).

How do you construct effective speaking notes?

Use a combination of words, phrases and sentences that help you remember the content of your speech. Reminders about delivery are particularly useful in your speaking notes. The from and format of your notes should not only help you during the presentation but also impress the audience favorably. Speaking notes should be easy to read and handle. Speaking notes should not distract the audience or lower your credibility. Be sure to consider your instructor's specific requirements for notes.

Group Communication

Usually concerns three or more people who interact and influence one another in the pursuit of a common interest. A study group, an athletic team, and families are different types of groups.

Pronunciation

Vocal element of delivery. Presenting with appropriate sounds of a word in the accepted order, without additions or omissions, and with stress on the appropriate syllable or syllables.

Inflection

Vocal element of delivery. Refers to changes in pitch that influence meaning. Often signal a question with rising inflection and the end of declarative sentences with a falling one. Changes in inflection can create just the right shade of meaning for words you wish to emphasize.

Pitch

Vocal element of delivery. Refers to how high or low you speak during your message.

Articulation

Vocal element of delivery. Refers to the manner in which an individual uses the lips, tongue, jaw, and soft palate to produce the vowel and consonant sounds of a language.

Rate

Vocal element of delivery. Refers to the number of words a speaker utters in a minute.

Quality

Vocal element of delivery. Refers to the unique (musical) characteristics of a speaker's voice caused by a variety of elements including one's manner of breathing, level of tension in the throat, use of the soft palate to close and open ones nasal passage, and condition of the sinuses and their affect on resonating cavities.

Volume

Vocal element of delivery. The public speaker needs to talk loudly enough to be heard easily without becoming overbearing.

Consider the Context

You can improve your listening by considering social relationships and contexts. Usually within a matter of seconds after you see someone who is going to give a speech, you make a variety of assumptions about the person and decide whether you will like that individual. As it turns out, your initial impressions may or may not be correct. Your perceptions may, however, be affected by the context.

Speaking from Manuscript

You read a speech verbatim, that is, from prepared written text that contains the entire speech, word for word.