Speeches and Spoken Word (Blog)

In this week in public speaking we talked about a lot of things. We talked about monologues and speeches. We had to memorize a speech or monologue, and we had to present it to the class. This was actually pretty difficult for me because I am not very strong at memorization. I have terrible memorization skills. So because of that, I had trouble doing this assignment. We had a couple days to memorize the speech and I really had to work. At first I chose to do MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. That was probably one of his most famous speech he performed. But then after, I changed my mind and decided to do a speech by nelson Mandela. The speech goes like this: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

 This speech was much easier for me to memorize and recite because I already knew some of it and I had heard it a million times. When I got up to recite it I still had trouble memorizing some parts and so it took me a while to finally get it, but I did. We talked about how to project your voice and how to use the right emotion when reciting a speech by someone that was powerful. Your audience needs to be able to feel that power through your speech. I think I did a pretty good job of doing that during my presentation. I was always pretty confident and sure of myself when speaking in front of a group of people so I didn’t need too much help in fixing some of my weaknesses.

The new topic we are discussing is a type of poem or speech called “spoken word”. It’s kind of like rap and a poem. It’s very powerful if done right. I looked up a religious spoken word video called “Jesus>Religion” and it basically talked about the difference with just blindly following your religion and following the rules instead of focusing on the main point, Jesus Christ. The video that I found was very relatable to me because I am very religious and my entire family is as well, so it is a big part of my life. Spoken word seems like it could be the hardest type of speech to give, but like I said, if given right, could be very powerful.