Synthesis Papers

Synthesis Paper When I found out I had to take a communications course, I thought I was going to die. I literally thought I was going to pass out during a speech and hit my head in front of the entire class. Alas, I can know say I made it through a public speaking course. I know it sounds dramatic, but the idea of speaking for an audience simply terrified me. In taking the course, I realized that communications did not only entail public speaking, but also the ability to communicate with others on a day to day basis. As the course progressed, I began to hone in on specific goals for myself as communicator, which included the development of my verbal delivery skills, the improvement of my nonverbal delivery skills, as well as becoming a stronger

I never considered outlining to be necessary for a paper or a speech, but throughout this course I have come to appreciate outlines and I now often use them for other classes as well. Outlines help all of my ideas come to life, in an organized and shortened manner. For the informative speech, we were required to turn in a draft outline. This outline was definitely not completed, as I ripped my own outline to shreds on things I wanted to add and things that were completely unnecessary pertaining to the speech. As I turned in the final draft of my informative outline, I was still lacking in areas of the outline. I attempted to follow the example outline in the Communications workbook, but I missed certain details such as the in text citations, as well as the work cited citations. I also wound up using my information in a different order during the speech than what was outlined. For instance, during my first point, I struggled to fully cite my facts from the textbook Mastering the World of Psychology, as I only cited the name of the textbook, and not the author, credibility, or the date. I also completely omitted parts of the outline during the speech, such as the video clip included in the beginning of my outline. As the course progressed, I later had to outline my persuasive speech, in which I followed all of the guidelines of an outline and remembered to include only relevant information pertaining to the speech as well as cite all of my information properly. This shows that I have made some improvements in my outlining skills, but I hope to continue to master outlining, in order to use it through everyday experiences as well as in other