Discussion Thread: Speech Analysis Dialogue

Purpose: This assignment invites you to consider how topic selection, goal and thesis planning, audience analysis, research, organization, and presentational variables can impact an audience’s response to a speech presentation. This can help you better understand and appreciate the planning process you must follow if you wish to prepare a top-notch speech for delivery to an audience.

Description: Watch President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, perhaps the most explicit presidential endorsement of Christian faith in recent times. As you watch this presentation, prepare and post your written answers to the following speech presentation analysis questions:

What is this speech’s topic?

What is the speech’s thesis or main point?

What in the speech, if anything, suggests the speaker (or his speech writers) had analyzed the audience and adapted the speech to its needs?

Did the speaker use effective and relevant material to support the speech’s thesis?

Was the speech effectively organized?

Did the speaker use clear, interesting, and accurate language?

Was the quality of the speaker’s voice acceptable?

Were the speaker’s movements and gestures meaningful and effective?

You must explain the observations and the reasoning that justify your answers to these questions. The more thoughtful, detailed, and documented your observations and explanations, the better the quality of your work.

Be sure to provide thoughtful, detail-supported written responses to each of the 8 questions and to support your observations by citing supportive parts of the Reagan speech presentation. Excessively general, insufficiently detailed responses—the ambiguously worded type that one could write without actually watching the speech—will be deemed deficient and will be graded accordingly