Harrisonburg Community: Speech Analysis

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The main topic of my speech was why the audience should volunteer. In the introduction of my speech, I linked my topic to the audience by explaining that at some point, each and every audience member had been exposed to community service. Whether they had completed in the past, they have a service requirement within clubs at JMU, or they have simply read the e-mails from Jared Diener discussing various volunteer opportunities within the honors college. Then, I discussed the problem of high poverty rates in the Harrisonburg community. This relates the topic even further to my audience because for a majority of the next four years, Harrisonburg will be their home and their community. Finally, toward the end of my speech, I provided various ways …show more content…

I first used Google Scholar to find articles or websites about the poverty situation in Harrisonburg and volunteer opportunities within the Harrisonburg community. In my speech, I cited the 2015 United States Census (which I also used to create my visual aid), Kara Krantz’s Honors Thesis from May 2016, The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, The Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, and Volunteermatch.org. Instead of solely gathering information about organizations from Volunteermatch.org, I wish that I used Volunteermatch.org as a means of finding a list of organizations, but then went to those organizations’ home websites to find further information about them. In order to obtain substantial information on how volunteering benefits both the community and the individual providing service, I searched through JMU Library’s database to find academic journals on the subject. In my speech, I cited the 2011 study by Marion Eppler published in the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and the 2013 study by Ausra Repeckiene published in the Social Research Journal. I felt that I incorporated research well throughout my speech to meet the requirement of at least seven sources, without bogging my speech down with unnecessary facts or …show more content…

I used a quote about service by Dorothy Height as my hook. Looking back, I do not believe this was the most effective hook possible. I think quotes are more effective when the audience knows the author of the quote, but I doubt that everyone in the audience knew who Dorothy Height was. I thought the message of her quote tied well with my speech though, which is why I chose to use it. I linked the speech to the audience by saying that everyone has been exposed to community service in the past, whether they have completed it themselves or at the very least, read the e-mails from Jared Diener about various volunteer opportunities within the Honors College. To show my credibility on the subject, I mentioned that I completed nearly 100 hours of community service in High School by doing mission trips over my spring breaks. In addition, I mentioned that my love for service lead me to further research on the topic, which increased my credibility as well. Lastly, I previewed my points of the speech by mentioning that we would discuss first, the poverty situation of Harrisonburg, second, how volunteering benefits both the community and the individual providing service and third, how the audience can take action and volunteer in

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