Cypress College Communication Skills Discussion

Write a Response to……

He communicates his nervousness and fears with his body posture and when he stutters or pauses throughout the video. He nonverbally shows how nervous he is because he constantly keeps looking at his notes at the start when saying one fact about the unhealthiness of hotdogs. He also nonverbally communicates nervousness because he does not use gestures of any form other than constantly checking his notes. Verbally he shows his nervousness when he constantly stutters throughout the video starting at 1:55 by stuttering and repeating when saying fat. At 2:08 in the video, he stutters and repeats cancer twice making his delivery not as strong since it makes him sound nervous. at 2:20 he stutters again when saying take which shows his nervousness again. He shows his nervousness again at 3:28 when he pauses partway in the speech to think about how he will finish his sentence. He does do well in starting off the speech by effectively delivering a joke with a none monotone voice that he keeps effectively throughout the speech.

The method of delivery that this speaker used was the extemporaneous method. It seemed that he did a good amount of research on this topic because he made references to a Harvard article, and he used key points on note cards while speaking in a conversational matter. In this speech, he made good use of his voice. His volume and pitch were good throughout the whole speech. His voice is clear and loud enough for a class-size audience. His vocal rate is fast enough for audience to keep up with his pace and not to feel bored. Short pauses after comma, longer ones between sentences. However, there were some times his rate was kind of off. He paused for a while a few times in the middle of a section rather than at the end of a key point. His nonverbal communication skills were extremely impressive. His physical appearance, physical space, posture, and facial emotions were all in keeping with the content of his speech. He kept his smiling face most of the time, especially in parts of humorous statements, creating a relaxed atmosphere However, I believe his gestures were unnecessary and repetitious. He just kept waving his hand up and down, which was distracting from what he was saying. Also, while I couldn’t see his feet in the video, his body was moving side to side, implying that his feet were moving as well, which is distracting and taking away attention away from his speech.