Speaking in public

A speech is the act of expressing or describing thoughts, feelings, or perceptions with words in public. There are four different types of speeches that can be given.

* Informative   This is designed to explain, instruct, or clarify
* Persuasive    This influences, motivates to act, or sells.
* Inspirational This inspires or helps the listeners to celebrate or commemorate.
* Improvisational This is given without prior preparation.

Brainstorming and clustering

This is a way to organize your ideas easily, when brainstorming you focus on the topic and write down a list of any words, thoughts, or phrases that come to mind regarding that topic. Not every idea will be used in your speech, but the list will help in develop it.

Another way to gather ideas is by using method called clustering. It is a conceptual map helping to develop a variety of alternatives for the speech. Begin with the main topic in the center. As ideas come, extend a line from the central topic outward to the new ideas. Continue doing so as the ideas come. This process nowadays is also known as mind map.

Parts of speech

Introduction

The role of the introduction is to capture the audience’s attention and introduce the general theme. This can be accomplished by any of the following methods.

* Ask rhetorical questions. This will cause the audience to begin thinking about the topic.
* Surprising statistics.
* Use a quotation. Remember to give credit where credit is due.
* Graphic description. This will draw a picture in the minds of those in the audience.

Body

The body is where your principal and subordinate points will be expressed. It is important that your ideas are expressed as clearly as possible to avoid confusion. Divide the body into from three to five principal points, each one having one or more subordinate points and supporting  material. Supporting material can be testimonials, analogies, statistics and stories. These give the audience reason to believe your principal ideas.

Conclusion

The conclusion should summarize the principal ideas given in the body. It should also reinforce the points you want the listeners remember. Do not spend too much time concluding the speech.

This was based on Quick Learning Personal Development Workshop.

I hope you find this helpful.

Napoleon Dynamite

Recently I saw Napoleon Dynamite an independent film directed by Jared Jess and starred by Jon Heder and Tina Majorino, the movie has a social satire context developed in a high school at Idaho United States. While the story isn't very complicated it still manages to appeal to adults and teens alike.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes about mexican people are expressed in the move using Pedro, such as accent, clothes, style of life, believes. Let’s extend some info about it. Who is the santo niño de atocha which Pedro mentioned in his speech? In the 13th century Madrid was lost to the Muslim invaders, and many Christians there were taken prisoners as spoils of war. The Christians were placed on strict punishments and prohibitions, and the devout prisoners were denied food by their captors. According to legend, only children under the age of 12 were permitted to bring them food.Reports soon began among the people that a child under the age of twelve had begun to bring food to childless prisoners. The child was dressed in pilgrim's clothing yet could not be identified as to the name of the child or its origin. In fact  the santo niño de atocha is a Roman Catholic image of the Child Jesus. In Mexico therefore some people have an image of Santo niño de atocha in their houses as a pray to Jesus to avoid lack of food or basic goods for their families.


The piñata story

Summer and Pedro were competing to the president position at their school. Summer a cheerleader was working in gain votes using flyers and ads to his classmates meanwhile Pedro made a Pinata which in fact was looking like Summer. In the history original piñata was represented by a star shape and seven pikes “The Seven Deadly Sins” and colored with shining colors representing  yearn. Nowadays piñata makers found that they can sell more piñatas if they made them look like cartoon characters, it is not common in Mexico find piñatas looking like real people, only in those cases when piñata makers want to make a mock or offence to someone they do it.

What I loved most was the musical selection like Canned heat by Jamiroquai and The Promise by When In Rome, my favorite part of the movie: when Napoleon danced as skit of Pedro Sanchez, I enjoyed when Napoleon exhales in response about something disgusting and expressions  like “sweet”, “such an idiot!”, “geez!”, “fine!” and “I caught you a delicious bass”.

I’m yearning to see another movie like this, not only because it had not too much money spent in locations, stage, dressing, etc. but also because it is a good story and terrific music. By the way my most viewed video in youtube is “Napoleon Dynamite dance scene”. (636, 522 views and counting).

Enjoy it.

How to backup your favorite movies & TV shows

How do you could get a copy of your favorite video media? If your medias are in a DVD disc then you may ripping first, an easy cheaper option is Clone DVD Mobile and easy DVD. The last one is to access to the protected DVD information, the first one is to ripping properly. I always use the iPod video format since has good quality in audio and video and a reasonable size.

My suggestion: ripping only in English as language and if you want subtitles, you should search them in google such as opensubtitles.org as soon as you get the subtitle you can  add them using VLC. Video > Subtitles Track > Open File. Some times there is a desynchronize rate in subtitles and audio if so, you can synchronize using  Tools > Track Synchronization.

The storage rate is cheaper than other media format, for example you could store The Tudors first season in only two DVD (10 episodes 60 minutes each one as average).

Enjoy it.