Principles of Speech (Ben Carson)

Elshadei Fantahun

Due: September 27, 2010

Principles of Speech

Convocation: Ben Carson (guest speaker)

Convocation is a formal assembly at a college or university, especially for a graduation ceremony. This year, Convocation fell on Friday September 24, 2010. Although many people were having second thoughts about going, it was quite an experience.

Usually, when you are a speaker at a function of this proportion, you rehearse and go over your speech enough times that you are not required to continuously look and read directly from your paper. This seemed to not be the case for a majority of the speakers at Convocation. Many of the speakers were reading directly off of the paper. This was not a very good tactic to use while speaking to an audience. This reduced the amount of eye contact that they had with the listeners. The speaker also didn’t seem very knowledgeable or confident in what he spoke of. This transferred to the audience and they didn’t feel very involved or affected by his words.

Although that was a bad start, everything changed when the guest speaker was announced to be coming up next. Ben Carson, a surgeon, was declared as the guest speaker a few days before and the campus anticipated his arrival. Now it was time to listen to this legend speak and people were unaware of what to expect. Was this going to be a long boring one-way lecture, or was he going to wow us with his words and experiences. As Ben Carson walked towards the podium, the audience stood, clapped, and some even cheered. His powerful presence brought life to what seemed to be a bored group of individuals.

As he spoke, he provided good eye contact and used any opportunity to involve the audience. His speech was put together very well and he seemed very knowledgeable about the topics that he chose to speak of. His approaches to involve the crowd worked over very well, creating a thirst for his words. His words weren’t one sided either; he made jokes to keep the crowd entertained...