COM 110 - 002

call to action

Call to Action Speech
Speaker: Adrian
Reviewer: Blaire Davidowitz
Topic: War on Terror

Today, Adrian spoke to his audience in his Call to Action Speech about the negatives on the War on Terror. He started his speech of asking the audience if they knew anyone that was serving in the war right now. He then went on to say that he had relatives fighting and had not seen them in a very long time, since the war started. This use of persuasive strategy did move me and the audience as well. I felt bad for him and angry that the war would bring this about not only on Adrian but other families as well. After this introduction, Adrian illustrated a few very clear needs for action on his topic. He explained that the war is killing people, over 3000 so far and wounded over 20,000 people as well. He also stated that the war was one of personal gain and preemptive too.

After spending time talking about the need for this war to end, Adrian gave us a really cool way to take action and stop the war. Adrian gave everyone in the audience a registration paper to vote in the upcoming presidential election. He told us that we could choose a candidate that will make a difference in the war and also vote for a Congress as well. He even gave us the three candidates, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, who could make this happen. I thought that this action was very need. He made registration very easy for us and if I had not already been registered I probably would have done it then and there. I only wish he would have given the audience an address to send it to so that we could get our registration card.

Finally, Adrian used persuasive techniques to the best of his ability to move the audience. As stated above, Adrian mentioned how he has not seen members of his family in a very long time. This, along with the statistics, helped to move the audience into taking action.

Overall, Adrian did a great job with his speech. He knew his facts and presented them perfectly. The only real weakness that I can see is that he spent a little too much time on his need step. He could have narrowed it down a bit since the audience was already on his side and he was only supposed to be strengthening commitment, not persuading us. But, besides this, the speech was very enjoyable to listen to.

Posted at 10:20PM Dec 05, 2007 by DAVIDOWITZ, BLAIRE in peer review  |  Comments[0]

Call To Action

Call to Action Speech
Speaker: David
Reviewer: Blaire Davidowitz
Topic: Skin Cancer

David did an excellent job with his speech about skin cancer. As one would probably expect, he was not in favor of the cancer and not only illustrated how important it was to do something about the skin cancer, but also had very good actions that could be taken to avoid it in the first place. David started his speech of stating the need for putting an end to skin cancer. David stated that over one million people get skin cancer in a year. Besides this, it is the most common cancer and shockingly enough it can effect anyone, especially kids and those with fair skin. Also, David let the audience know that one in five Americans may develop skin cancer sometime in their lives. These shocking numbers truly did motivate the audience to take action against developing skin cancer.

Once this need was made clear, David went on to provide specific actions that the audience could take to defer and hopefully prevent skin cancer in the long run. For this action, David handed out a small piece of paper giving pretty specific actions for the audience to take in order to help themselves against the skin cancer. Some of these actions consisted of using sunscreen, wearing hats and long clothing, and going to see a dermatologist once a year. The actions are actually very reasonable and there is a good chance that the audience will actually practice these actions, as opposed to other actions from speakers that were a little more farfetched.

Finally, David used persuasive strategies and evidence to move his audience. As stated above, the numbers David gave in his need step truly did hit the audience on more of a personal level. Skin cancer seemed so much easier to get once I learned of these horrifying statistics. The fact that I may die if I do not protect myself from the sun truly did move me, and I?m sure that it did the same for many others as well.

David did a great job with his speech. His only weaknesses were that he tended to read off of his facts. I wish that he had known them a little better; this would have made him more credible. But, he stuck to the time limit and had great facts and preventions of skin cancer for his audience. Overall, this speech achieved its purpose.

Posted at 10:19PM Dec 05, 2007 by DAVIDOWITZ, BLAIRE in peer review  |  Comments[0]

Peer Review

Call to Action Speech
Speaker: James
Reviewer: Morgan Parks
Topic: Animal welfare

James did a good job at recapping and refreshing his audience on what he covered in his last speech. He also provided facts to help bring around the point that action needs to be taken such as over 9 million cats and dogs are euthanized, over 15 million are used for testing, and that many of the 10 billion animals we eat are caged for their entire life.
James proposed two actions an indirect and direct one. The direct course of action he proposed was to have all your pets spayed and neutered, and to adopt your pets instead of buying them since most pets that are turned into the shelter are turned in by their owners. He also proposed the indirect method of watching where your money went. He stated that if you pay for it it is the same as killing it. He said that we need to reduce the amount of animal meat we consume, because we don't need as much as we ingest any way. He proposed attainable solutions to the problem that we as an audience could implement every day. James was straight forward and direct and simple to attain on the audiences part.

Posted at 03:08PM Dec 05, 2007 by PARKS, MORGAN in peer review  |  Comments[0]

Peer Review: Call to Action Speech

Speaker: Morgan J.

Reviewer: Kristin Freeman

Morgan clearly illustrated the need to take action regarding her topic.  She stressed that we need to reduce the amount of violence in the media.  After restating some of the things of why we should cut down on violent media, she was very specific on things that we should do to help.  Since the violence in media causes people to solve problems violently, makes more people abusive more likely to commit a crime; Morgan came up with actions that we should take.  For example, she said that we could write a letter to express our concern or join a group that supports this problem. 

She had good persuasive strategies and overall her speech was well done.  However, Morgan might not have ended her speech so shortly. 

Posted at 11:04AM Dec 05, 2007 by FREEMAN, KRISTIN in peer review  |  Comments[0]

Self-Reflection

Topic: Skin Cancer

David Gruetzke

Self-Reflection

I started off by reviewing a little bit of what I said in my last speech. I informed the audience why skin cancer is such a serious and dangerous disease and I showed them why I think that we have to take action now, rather then later. My argument for doing something now was that the o-zone layer is decreasing and if it keeps on doing that we'll be in big trouble soon. I then went on and talked about the action that the audience should take, I told them that they should wear long clothing while being out in the sun, use sun screen, wear hats, and see a Dermatologist at least once a year for a yearly check-out. I also said that it is important to protect young children against skin cancer because bad sun burns in your childhood almost always lead to skin cancer. I passed out a little sheet on which it had some tips of how to protect yourself against skin cancer. Over all I think I did a pretty well job at showing the audience why we have to do something now and what exactly we can do and should do. The only thing that I can think of that I could have improved on was my presentation, and not reading my outline as much as I was.

Posted at 11:03AM Dec 05, 2007 by GRUETZKE, DAVID in Self Reflections  |  Comments[0]

Peer Review

Call to Action Speech
Speaker: Adrian
Reviewer: David Gruetzke

Adrian talked about ending the war of terror, he started of with giving us reasons why this war is "bad". He said that we're loosing a lot of America lives and that over 3800 lives have already been lost since the start of the war. He also said that the war is a war of personal gain for Bush and Cheney because they both have relations with the oil industry. He pretty much said that the war is wrong because too many lives are lost and only reason why we still have troops over there is because of the personal interests of our politicians. In order to resolve this problem he proposed that we vote and that we choose what we think is the best candidate with the best policies that we agree with. I had trouble believing what he was saying because some of the factual information that he gave us sounded like it came from a not so creditable source "antiwar.com" I think it was. But over all I think Adrian did a great job at showing us why this war is wrong and what we as individuals can do to change that.

Posted at 10:50AM Dec 05, 2007 by GRUETZKE, DAVID in peer review  |  Comments[0]

Peer Review

Call to Action Speech
Speaker: Blair

Reviewer: David Gruetzke

Blair talked about getting the electoral college abolished or at least reformed. She started off giving us some general information about the electoral college and how it works. What really caught my attention was when she said that if we as students voted right now, it wouldn't count. This pretty much did it for me and it convinced me that we have to do something about that. She proposed that we all take a trip to Washington D.C. and speak directly to Congress, she had every little detail about the trip planned out and it was well done. The best persuasive strategy that she used in my opinion was when she told us that student votes don't count and that individual votes don't really count either. I like when she used the phrase "we'll go down in history" this gave me the feeling that i could make a difference. Over all I think she did a good job at convincing us that we need to abolish the electoral college and at tell us what we could do to accomplish that goal.

Posted at 10:39AM Dec 05, 2007 by GRUETZKE, DAVID in peer review  |  Comments[0]