Dye1
Name:Blakely Dye
Date:6 December 2007
Title:Ryan Godwin: Representing Buckhannon
Specific Purpose:To congratulate Ryan Godwin for his accomplishments in COMM 101.
Thesis:Ryan Godwin is surely worthy of congratulations after all the hard work
he has put into his class throughout the past four months.
Preview:We will congratulate Ryan Godwin by taking a look into Ryan’s life,
shedding some light on his goals and accomplishments for the semester,
and finally examining what Ryan would like to improve up on in the
future.
Type of Organizational Pattern:Topical
Introduction
I.John Powell once said, “Communication works for those who work at it” (Powell).
II.All of us in this class know how true this quotation is.
1.We have all gone through the gruesome process of writing outlines and we have
conquered our fears and stood before a group of people to give a speech.
- This class most certainly has not been a walk in the park.
III.One person in this class in particular, Ryan Godwin, has worked very hard to better
himself as a public speaker.
IV.Today, I will take the time to tell you a bit about Ryan as a person, to congratulate his
accomplishments in this class, and finally to share with you some of the improvements
Ryan wishes to make to improve his public speaking skills.
Body
I.Before congratulating Ryan, we should first know a little bit more about him.
A.Ryan isa petroleum engineering major who reigns from Buckhannon, West
Virginia.
- Ryan is very sports oriented.
- He loves to golf and fish.
- He also collects sports cards.
- In his free time at Marietta, he loves to play ping pong with friends and go to the gym to work out.
- In addition to his love for sports, Ryan told me about some of his favorites.
- Ryan loves the color blue and his favorite animal is a dog.
- Ryan likes to watch Remember the Titans and enjoys Chinese food.
- Finally, Ryan is quite lucky, because his favorite holiday, Christmas, is right around the corner.
II.Ryan has worked very hard throughout this semester.
- Recall the quotation from the introduction, “Communication works for those who work at it” (Powell).
- Ryan displays the very essence of this quote.
- Ryan set a few goals coming into this semester.
- He wanted to become more comfortable in front of groups of people and show confidence as well (Ryan).
a.Ryan feels he has accomplished this goal and I agree with him.
b.For example, for his introduction speech, I commented in my
composition book that he should be more confident.
c.In his persuasive speech, it was very apparent that Ryan knew his
topic very well, which showed me and probably most of you that
he was very confident.
d.Ryan was also continually one of the first people to give his
speeches, showing his dedication and wish to get over his nerves.
- Another goal that Ryan set for this semester was to create quality speeches (Ryan).
a.Ryan spoke to us in his informative speech about Alzheimer’s
disease and he spoke about ATU safety in his persuasive speech.
b.Both speeches were well prepared for and he has many statistics
and facts in both.
c.His work on becoming prepared has really helped to increase his
credibility.
- Ryan’s hard work in this course is certainly worth congratulating.
- To me, Ryan has done a great job working on his goals.
III.Although Ryan may have been very successful in this class, he still has many aspects of
public speaking that he would like to work on.
- Ryan would first like to work on using vocal variety (Ryan).
- Ryan has already shown some improvement in this area.
- In his first speech, Ryan mumbled a bit through the introduction.
- In his persuasive speech he sounded a bit more excited.
- The fact that he realizes his weakness and wants to work on it is enough to help for the future.
- In addition to focusing on vocal variety, Ryan feels that he needs to improve on his eye contact(Ryan).
- When Ryan told me this, I was rather surprised.
- For all four of his speeches, I wrote in my composition book that he had great eye contact.
- Although he already has great eye contact to the entire room, there is always room for improvement and becoming more prepared will help.
- Feeling and being prepared for his speeches is another goal he would like to work on for the future (Ryan).
- With being more prepared, it will be easier for Ryan to fight through his mistakes and not make so many pauses.
- Being more prepared will also help Ryan improve on his eye contact, vocal variety, and other goals he might have because he won’t have to focus so much on the content of the speech but rather his presentation.
- It is up to us to help encourage him to continue to reach these goals.
Conclusion
- Today we got to know a little bit more about Ryan Godwin and took a look at some of his accomplishments during this class and some of his goals for the future.
- As many of us sitting in these seats today, Ryan has worked very hard in this class and deserves congratulations for this.
- So congratulations to you, Ryan, and I encourage the rest of you to take the time to congratulate him on a job well done.
Works Cited
Godwin, Ryan. Personal interview. 22, Nov. 2007.
Powell, John. 31 Nov. 2007. Thinkexist.com. <
communication_works_for_those_who_work_at_it/212252.html>.