Reflectively Speaking!♥

When the speech project was introduced to us, the first topic that came to my mind was womens’ rights in the Middle East. I thought of burkhas and hijabs and how much I dislike them and decided that I definitely wanted to include something about them in my speech. After researching a little and talking to Mr. Bellew, I realized that it was better to make my topic related to the whole world because there are many cases of the oppression of womens’ rights everywhere. Not only did I read and learn more about womens’ rights throughout this process, but I also learned how to be a more persuasive and more effective public speaker through the use of literary devices. While writing my speech I was sometimes conscious of the devices that I was using. But most of the time it happened naturally. I used repetition, an anecdote, personal pronouns, and more. After we had delivered our speeches and had to annotate them, I noticed that I had more devices than I had expected and that many were put in unconsciously. I feel like the main thing I learned was the importance of each of the literary devices and how much of an effect they really have on making the speeches more persuasive.

In my opinion, both presentation and content have a huge impact on persuading a listener. These two factors depend on each other very much, because without one, the speech is either pointless or not very interesting and persuasive. Without the adequate content, the speech becomes pointless and even though it sounds good because of its strong presentation, it still lacks the support from the content. However, if the content is excellent but the presentation is not, then the speech becomes either boring or not persuasive at all. Therefore I believe that although it is extremely important for a person to have great presentation, their content also makes a big difference!

My speech related to the mission statement (“Canadian Academy inspires students to inquire, reflect, and choose to compassionately impact the world throughout their lives”). In my speech I initially asked the audience to change their perspectives on womens’ rights. From there they can “choose to compassionately impact the world” and make a difference especially in Islamic countries in the Middle East. I hope I was able to inspire women in the audience to be their best and to attempt to impact the world.