How to SUCCEED in COMM 100
- Come to class
- Bookmark the schedule; know what is coming up
- Have chapter read on assigned day
- Plan for all three speeches
- Read all three assignments early in semester
- Ponder if you can link all three
- Manage your time well
- Plan your reading/writing for the week
- Take note of your speech dates as soon as they are posted
- With each chapter covered, ask yourself how you can apply the material to your upcoming speech.
- Start writing your speeches early
- Grow them from the middle
- Get ideas down as fragments
- Find the best organizational pattern
- Work on phrasing your main points & sub-points
- Flesh them out to full sentences
- Strive for parallel phrasing
- Research diligently
- Avoid general search engines
- Pay attention to Library Activity
- Keep to Academic sources
- Track sources as you go
- Make bibliography entries
- Put research into your preparation outline
- Keeping within the outline format
- A speech is not a paper
- Support assertions with sufficient evidence
- Use a wide variety of good sources
- Collapse outline and check phrasing of main points
- Compose a good preview statement
- Finish your Header Section
- Write a central idea and specific purpose statement that reflect your main points
- Have your speech finished 3 or 4 days before giving it
- Make your visual aids before your rehearsal process
- Keep them simple and clear
- Make sure they conform to the assignment
- Know the technology you plan to use
- Try it on classroom computer days before speech
- Especially PowerPoint made on a Mac
- Rehearse your speech in at least 4 sessions
- First by reading your preparation outline
- Then with speaking outline and preparation outline
- Then only with speaking outline and visual aids
- Then with live audience and visual aids
- Give your speech extemporaneously
- Connect with your audience
- Use a conversational tone
- Be confident and enthusiastic
- Be a good tour guide; pace your ideas
- Cite all of your sources
- Be active during oral critiques
- Own your own perceptions
- Apply comments of other speeches to your next speech
- Become a better listener
- Study for the final
- Distributed practice trumps cramming
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How to FAIL Comm 100
- Blow off class
- Be surprised by those you attend
- Act like you have no ideas of what the next speech assignment is
- Live in the moment, not for the future
- Forget when your speech is due
- Panic when you check and throw your speech together
- Buy your speech off the internet -or-
- Cobble together a speech by cutting and pasting from web pages. -or-
- Write your speech as quickly as possible.
- Write it as stream of consciousness; that's fun!
- Write it as paragraphs.
- Don't know or care what the main points are or how they are arranged
- Don't model your speech after the many in the book
- Don't use the Microsoft Word template for an organizational pattern nor the online outliner app.
- Use Google as your main research tool
- Don't cite your sources
- Don't turn in a bibliography.
- Use only a few sources
- Use general web sites
- As extra fun, use only blanket citations
- Don't rehearse out loud
- In fact, don't rehearse at all
- Make a sloppy and cluttered visual aid the night before
- Fumble with it (or the computer)
- Forget to use it
- Distract us with it
- Set up for your speech as if it was your first time in the classroom
- Read your speech from your preparation outline
- Mumble a lot
- Let ends of phrases trail off
- Be monotone
- Don't look at us at all
- Mispronounce words
- Say "um' and "uh" as much as you can
- Violate classroom ethics
- Put your audience in danger
- Use out-dated material
- Lie a lot
- Be belligerent
- Dis your audience
- Choose trivial topics
- Plagiarize!
- Don't contribute
- Doodle while classmates speak
- Don't give encouraging feedback during the speech
- Don't participate during the oral critique
- Cram for the final the night before
- Don't know where or when it is; even though that is on the schedule of classes from Day 1
- Bring the wrong Scantron form
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