The selected speech is a TED talk by Julian Treasure on how to make an oration enjoyable. He begins by highlighting things to avoid to earn trust, including gossip, judging, negativing, complaining, excuses, exaggeration, and self-centeredness (TED, 2014). These aspects depict the person as undesirable, pushing people away and making them disinterested in the speaker. Treasure further elaborates on the factors that can improve oration, including honesty, authenticity, integrity, and love (TED, 2014). By honesty, he means that a speaker must be valid and not include overstatements. Authenticity entails presenting verifiable facts through detailed research and the use of statistics (TED, 2014). Integrity also relates to honesty, and it refers to truthfulness or presenting supported ideas. Other essential aspects of offering a memorable talk include using an appropriate tone, pace, posture, pitch, volume, and integration of silence (TED, 2014). The elements augment a speaker’s presentation allowing the listeners to understand and remember ideas. Lastly, Treasure also provides tips on how the audience can prepare physically for an effective speech delivery through lip practice (TED, 2014). Overall, the presentation is well structured in that it covers essential aspects of the topic presented.
My reaction was attentiveness as the oration was well structured and interesting. In the beginning, I was drawn to the topic and was interested in learning more about it. The topic was how to give an exciting and memorable talk (TED, 2014). The aspects that I liked most about the address are the organization and content, which were well researched. The talk delivery and expressive style were effective as the speaker, Julian Treasure, had an upright posture, an audible tone, an appropriate pitch, and non-verbal cues. Overall, the presenter gave a compelling oration because of his background and excellent public speaking skills. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give him ten because he organized his speech well, employed suitable verbal and non-verbal cues, and covered all points.
Reference
TED. (2014). How to speak so that people want to listen. Julian Treasure [Video]. YouTube.