Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Chapter 17 Mandi and Sarah
Chapter 17 bases their main points around oral presentations. It starts off by saying a very surprising statistic, more than seven hundred out of the surveyed managers said that the ability to communicate and plan effectively in front of an audience is the most important career skill. There are two types of presentations, informal and formal. Informal is where you most likely know your audience and it’s you are presenting material that the audience knows some background on. Informal presentations can range from large amounts of people to very small business meetings, as can formal presentations. The difference between the two though is that a formal presentation usually takes a lot more effort to prepare because the audience is probably not going to be familiar with you or the topic that you will be discussing. Class presentations are kind of a practice for the real world. When you give presentations to your classmates, they can give you feedback and tell you what your strong and weak points are. You can then use their advice to improve your presentation skills. This chapter also talks about getting to know your audience. It is important to know who you are speaking to in order to get your point across effectively. There are four possible audiences, professional peers, non-expert professionals, international audiences, and general audiences. After you decide what audience type you will be speaking to it is time to establish the purpose of the presentation. Is it an informative presentation where you will be providing people with general background information about a topic or helping them to make a decision? There is also persuasive presentations where you try and get your audience to see whatever topic you are discussing your way and to agree with you. It is very important to establish common ground between yourself and your audience. The next type of presentation is a demonstrative presentation, where you usually show the audience a process of some sort. The last one is a training session where you are educating, demonstrating, and teaching your audience how to perform a task. Visuals are a good way to get your audience attention, keep their attention throughout the speech, and make them remember what you have taught them. We have now discussed all the main points from chapter 17 and have taught you all about the different types of oral presentations.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
22 comments:
The chapter seventeen summary was very well written. However, they said that the statistic that noted the ability to communicate and plan effectively in front of an audience is the most important career to have surprised them. This did not surprise me at all. My personal experience in the work place has shown me that the ability to work well with other people, is probably more important than the amount of information you know about how to do a certain task. In the work place things are constantly changing on the fly. It is important to be able to adapt to changes and be able to still be productive.
In this class we have to do oral presentations on a topic from our major. This would be a formal presentation. I think that these types of presentations is a example to help you with your presentation skills. It is very important to establish common ground between yourself and your audience. The person who is presenting needs to have good information on their topic. If you are not interested then your audience will know that you arent interested. Then sometimes the audience wont be that interested and become bored. I agree with the summary and how it said that visuals are a good way to get your audience attention. It helps them remember what you talked about.
Oral communication appears to be a lost art these days. In a world of internet chat, text messages, blogs and websites; ideas are getting pushed with typed text instead of spoken words. The more you know about your audience, the more likely you can tailor to their needs and interests. You can now focus in on information they want to hear. Your listeners will assume you have a great deal of knowledge of your subject and you don't want to disappoint. Make sure you are informed and good at getting your point across.
The summary was well written and contained all the important information. When they talked about audiences I thought about when I was trying to find a topic for my presentation for this class. I found several topics to report on but I had to think about which one would be the easiest for the majority of the class to understand. It also talks about visuals in the summary. I think they are very important to conveying information effectively. No one wants to try to read red text on a pink background. You have to be able to easily see the information.
Communicating orally is a huge part of technical communication, since it is alot of group work. Group work is very important, and working well together ewith others is a big part of this project in class. If you cannot work well with others, you cannot do any of these projects that he is assigning.
In my job, working well together with others and communicating orally is very important. I ahve to do certain jobs with others and we have tio work together to finish them. When engaing in a conversation, yuou have to be a good listener, and not just talk the whole time.
I think it is an obvious statistic that one of the most important things in the work force is communicating in front of an audience. If you can't communicate information to others, than how are you going to get information that you found in your job or get your work across to your co-workers? Also, if you happened to create something that is saleable, how are you going to get the information to your clients? So I completely agree that being able to orally communicate your ideas is very important. Hearing someone present their idea or product is sometimes better than reading about it.
Oral presentations occur frequently in the workplace, whether formal or informal. My education has allowed me to experience and practice both types, especially formal presenations, which hopefully will leave me better prepared in the future. Receiving feedback on oral reports, like our comment sheets used in class, has been very useful. It is helpful to find out fellow students input as well as a professor's. Furthermore, before composing a presentation, one must establish the type of report (informative, persuasive, demonstrative) as well as the type of audience. A presentation must be organized and modified in order to relate to the audience.
Speaking and planning in front of an audiance can be very intimadating for some people. I myself, have always felt some level of comfort infront of others. However, I am comfortable in a non formal setting. Where I can talk about a topic I am knowledgeable in and my audiance is knowledgeable in. I never have had to give a formal presentation, the most formal was in my speech. I had to speak in front of people I didn't know and topics my audiance may only have some knowledge in. I have always thought that knowing your audiance is extremly important. For example you wouldn't write a scientific report on influenza to 2nd graders, you would just tell them what to do so they can feel better again.
I feel that in the day where email and instant messaging are extremely common place that oral presentations are still important and relevant. Being able to stand up in front of a large number of people and talk fluently and appear calm is a difficult task for many people. This is why politicians and the like give rousing speeches as to instill confidence in people of their character. As for presentations that teach or demonstrate or inform these are extremely beneficial because they address a group of people and when certain individuals have questions or comments they can respond to them quickly and easily. This makes for an easy way to inform a large number of people quickly and easily.
I have to agree that engaging in oral communication is important because it plays an important role in professional communication in any organization or career. This chapter gave good detailed examples in different types of presentations to fit with your audiences and the purpose. It could sometimes be nerve wrecking for me whenever I have to present or give a speech to the audiences. Since this chapter explains really well on organizing a professional presentation, I could use the information given in this chapter as a reference to giving presentation in the near future and become more confident in my presentations.
i liked this chapter because it relates to my major, speech communication. I have given many presentations throughout high school and college. The majority of them have bben formal. I enjoy formal presentations because I can prepare and reherse for them, which will often take off the pressure for me. On the other hand, I agree with the book when it says that informal are nice too, because the audience will generally have a better understanding on the topic you are presenting. The audience you are presenting to is again important to consider. Once you know the type of audience you can establish your purpose. I think this is the hardest part of a presentation or any type of document. Another important thing to include is organization and clarity. This will hold the audience's attention and ensure they get the most out of your presentation.
Like the chapter mentions, class presentations are a great way to prepare for the real world. A lot of people have a fear of public speaking or just do not like presenting their work to a class. However, it is very likely that any future job will require you to present information or speak in front of your co-workers. Being able to practice that in school is a great resource. Even if people do not feel 100% comfortable in front of an audience, at least they have a basic understanding of how it goes and possible techniques to calm them down before they present.
In this chapter they talked about how important the communication in the work place is an important. In my last job working in along side with engineers I learned that you could know everything but if you could not explain what you knew it was not worth anything to anyone else. Last semester I took a speech class witch I was very nervous about. I learned haw to talk professional and relay information that I knew and no one else understood. It was a very useful class and I am glad I took it. This chapter talks about the difference between formal and informal. I like to hear formal speeches better because it seems to be more informational to me.
quote "The summary was well written and contained all the important information. When they talked about audiences I thought about when I was trying to find a topic for my presentation for this class. I found several topics to report on but I had to think about which one would be the easiest for the majority of the class to understand. It also talks about visuals in the summary. I think they are very important to conveying information effectively. No one wants to try to read red text on a pink background. You have to be able to easily see the information." (unquote)
i agree...
working with experinced people can help a person learn alot more about anything quicker than reading out of a text book. they can show you there own person experince and help you figure out what to do and what not to do. and you can improve upon whatever they have taught you to make your own quicker way of doing things.
It does not suprise me either that it is important to be able to communicate in front of an audience. It seems like almost all careers that you will be in in the future will involve speaking in front of an audience. If you are not able to do that effectively your information may not be recieved right by your audience. In order to do that you need to look at some of the topics that are discuss in this chapter. For example, your audience, you should always customized your speech for the people you are giving it to. You should also make sure you are giving the approproiate type of speech for the topic.
In chapter seventeen they mostly talked about oral presentations. This summary was a well written summary because they captured the right context. In my opinion i think it is very important to communicate orally. I seem to have troubles communicating in front of a large audience. I know in order to be successful in construction I will need to work on my communications skills. If you are able to communicate information to others instead of just knowing the information yourself, you will be more successful. In conclusion, relating information to others is the most important aspect of any type of business.
I have done every presentation from informative to demonstrative in my educational career. This chapter did a very good job of explaining all of the different types of presentations, all the different types of audiences and the differences between informal and formal presentations. This chapter would be a great chapter to read in any speech class that someone would have to take; it really explains the purposes of each kind of presentation. Overall, I think this summary was done very well, it really grasped the overall concept of the chapter and it really explained in-depth what the chapter was all about.
Communicating effectively is very important issue of today. Since people are moving around from different parts of the world to other different part of the world so, while communicating the intermingled mass should be taken in mind. To communicate effectively in front of audience one should be well prepared. He/she should have idea of what he is taking about and should know if he/she is able to make audience understand what he/she is talking about. Effective communication has become a major skill today. So, communicating in a good way, clarifying the subject by using visuals or explaining things easier way will help to boost this skill. Presenting a professional image, being active and good listener and building the confidence in what one is doing are the major things needed to be considered to have a good standing in oral communication.
First of all I think that the summary is very well organized. I have had to do many presentations through out my school career. All of the presentations that I have done thus far have been informal presentations. I have done presentations for speech class, English classes, and design classes. I have also given different types of speeches. I have given many informational speeches. I have also done several persuasive speeches such as why so should live in the dorms or why you should join intramural sports. I have done a couple demonstrative speeches such as how to change your oil. I agree with the book in that ability to communicate and plan effectively in front of an audience is the most important career skill.
This chapter covers one of the most important subjects in business today. Being able to persuade an audience into thinking what you want them to can be a very hard task. However, for some people it can be very easy. I think it really depends on how your personality is. For me, I love to give oral presentations, they are far easier than writing a paper, and for me anyways, it is easier to get across your point. Burnett does a great job of giving simple ideas to help anyone improve there oral presenting skills. Once you have confidence in yourself, it will be much easier to do these presentations.
Post a Comment