Rhetorical Analysis Of A Speech By Dr. Rosanna Reyes

On Thursday, February 16, 2017, Dr. Rosanna Reyes delivered a speech entitled “From Theory to Practice: Engaging First Generation College Students.” The speech was interesting to me, but perhaps this was because I related to the topic. Because of the layout of the speech and the way it was delivered, I sincerely believe that anyone who was not a first generation college student may have fallen asleep during this speech. I also do not think that she accomplished the goal of her speech: to persuade her audience to take action to engage first generation college students at a liberal arts college.
Her introduction really was not even an introduction at all; in fact, it was nothing more than a biography on her part. This was effective with grabbing the audience’s attention because she told the story of her background and kept it interesting. I could

see that during most of her introduction, Dr. Reyes had all audience members looking at her. However, where she came from was not a great way to preview the speech. In fact, after the introduction, the only reason I knew where the speech was headed was because I had written down the title before she started speaking; otherwise, I sincerely would have thought the speech was going to be about her life story (which was still very interesting). She could have fixed this simply by having one sentence to preview what she would be talking about.
The body of Dr.

Reyes speech was a little clearer than her introduction, but not much. Her entire speech was based on personal narratives from Jefferson, the college she works a dean for; the reason I mention this is because the stories made it easy for her to explain what she was talking about while still keeping the audience’s attention, but this also made us confused. Dr. Reyes kept mentioning places at Jefferson as though we knew exactly what she was talking about, even though her audience members had never stepped foot on that campus (most of the audience were members of Allegheny College). Because of this, her points were not made very clear. She could have fixed this by explaining more of where she was talking about. Another problem with the speech was that Dr. Reyes kept saying phrase like, “I’ll explain this later,” or “We’ll come back to this.” Phrases like these made it hard to see where the speech was going and left me confused. Clearly, I was not the only person she lost the attention of though because I had noticed one person playing on their phone and another person sleeping during the middle of the

speech.
Her conclusion was not really even a conclusion. At the beginning of her last point, Dr. Reyes said “I’m going to start wrapping up.” This was confusing because after saying this, she still continued to talk for another five minutes. Because she had said that concluding phrase so early, it felt like the whole audience was false-started in preparing for the speech to end. She could have avoided this by saying the phrase after stating her last point. Furthermore, after her last point, or body of her speech, it completely ended by her saying, “That’s it, thank you.” This being said, her speech completely lacked a conclusion.
The fact that Rosanna Reyes had earned her doctorate was clear in the delivery of her speech. She was extremely professional, and despite her Latino background and accent, her words were still very clear. She did a great job of pausing for effect and using her vocal variety to keep the speech interesting. She also was good at responding to any problems during her speech. For example, the stage of the auditorium we were in was made entirely of wood, and she wore really high heels that made a lot of noise when she moved around. At the beginning of her speech, she swayed a little, making her shoes echo off the floor, but by the end of the speech, she barely moved, knowing of the noise issue. Her delivery was really good, and I kept note of how she spoke to use some of her tactics in my speeches.
Overall, Dr. Reyes herself was what kept her speech interesting. She was very professional and her stories made her likable. However, if she were to give the speech over, I think she would need to completely rewrite her introduction and conclusion. Also, I think she would need to reorganize her speech so her audience would be about to keep up with her points.