8A Drama: Impromptu Speech from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

8A Drama: Persuasive Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

Reflecting upon the two speeches above, I anticipate that my Persuasive Topic Speech had a higher quality than the other. The major reason for this choice is the fact that we had numerous time to prepare for our final Persuasive Topic Speech, whereas we had to pick a topic at the place and had only 30 seconds to prepare for our impromptu speech. Another reason is that I have learned my mistakes beforehand, which made me deliver my speech better.

For instance, the modulation of the speech. In my persuasive speech about tax increase, my voice was quite projected that even I can hear what I was saying. My low pitch with a slower pace than my usual speaking suited the topic which was a serious one. By pausing my speech occasionally made the topic serious furthermore. I have emphasized some places, especially in the conclusion where I share my ideas, to convince moreover.

My body posture during this speech was moderate, meaning that my posture was better than my impromptu speech but required more improvement. On the other hand, my gestures using my hands were quite effective than I thought of due to the fact that it expresses the sign of me emphasizing my parts. I don’t think that I didn’t have that much facial expression than what I had thought of. Since my speech was quite serious, maybe I could only show my serious face.

My content was well structured with detailed information that lasted within the time that Mr.Meiklejohn had set. My speech started out with a question instead of a boring “Today I am going to talk about,” and included 3 body parts with detailed points. I also included a point from other perspective. In my case, I added a part that we cannot easily avoid the tax increase.

I should improve on my volume, emphasis, inflection and facial expression. In the video, my volume was too soft. I also believe that I didn’t emphasized that much in my body parts, and inflected on several words.

Here is a student in my class’ speech that was the most persuasive one in my opinion:

8A Drama: Persuasive Speeches from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

This speech was quite captivating. Despite his soft volume, his voice was projected and has inflected important words/phrases in his speech. He also had a great speech structure; a unique introduction, interesting body parts and a conclusion with a ending involving us to think about it. He also had a good posture that his voice will project well.

8A Drama: Impromptu Speech from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

On February 14th (St.Valentine’s Day…), our class held an impromptu speech. Basically, what we did was each student had to pick a paper with a topic written, in a black top hat. In my case, as seen in the video above, my topic was ‘Snake’. Our Drama Teacher, Mr.Meiklejohn, gave us 30 seconds per student for organizing their speech. After the 30 seconds, we had to talk about the given topic in approximately a minute.

Overall my impromptu speech, in my opinion, was worse than I have expected. Probably this is due to my frailty when I naturally put pressure on myself. However, my volume, projection, pitch and emphasis was better than I have expected. On the other hand, my improvements required for next time would be the organization and the pace with more pauses. As you can have a look at my speech, the topics goes from Harry Potter to effects of a snake venom. I should have linked another topic that would have related between the two topics mentioned above. Since I had a quick pace even I had a time for slowing down along with including minimal pauses, I had to occasionally stop for a second to breath.

8A Drama: Status from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

8A Drama: Status from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

8A Drama: Character Formative from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

For a couple of weeks in Drama class, we were doing a storytelling project, which we performed a skit from an old story/folk tale. Our unit question for this unit was “Can actions speak louder than words?”, and our significant concept was “Stories can be told dramatically through action and voice, not just through written word.” Our group did “The Crane Lady – Tsuru no Ongaeshi (つるのおんがえし)”, a Japanese Folk Tale.

We had a lot of progress until we performed our stories. First thing we did, was doing an explosion tag, which is when we get tagged, we have to explode vocally and physically. We also did a story telling via one to one. We even discussed what makes a story? Before we started practicing our story, we read a story called ‘The wife who ate nothing’ (a Japanese folk tale), and discussed how the narration is used. Finally, we started our task. I was with Yongwon, Emily, and Shiho. We discussed which story we should do, and we chose ‘Tsuru no Ongaeshi”. I think I made a huge progress between the beginning of the unit, and our final storytelling. One reason is that at first, I was so shy performing in front of the audience, but when we performed our story in front of our audience, I wasn’t nervous that much.

In my storytelling skit, there were clear strengths and weaknesses in our scene as a whole group and as myself. One of the strengths as a whole group was that each person was emotional, over exaggerating their feelings so that the audience would know their feelings in the story. Also, another positive point was to adjust the mistakes as if no one didn’t see the mistake. In the other hand, our weaknesses as a whole group was we were sometimes blocking each other, which is a negative thing since the audience can’t see all the people in one scene. My strength in this skit was being emotional than always. I think I improved being emotional throughout this unit, like I just said before. But one of my negative point, was not facing to the audience that much. But our scene was successful, since everyone helped each other in the scenes, which was the best performance in this unit.

I could do a lot of things to further improve my artistic process. For instance, I would practice more at home, and improve on facing to the audience more, being more emotional, et cetera.

Overall, I improved my artistic skills for storytelling scenes, and produced an awesome skit about a Japanese Old Folk Tale, during this unit!

Describe the progress have you made so far. You are encouraged to compare/contrast it to your first speech. (You may need to review the skills and knowledge area for the unit, either on your cover sheet or at the top of this wiki)

I think I’ve improved a lot of my abilities, when lecturing a final speech, from the first speech I made about; how skills in the game can help you when studying. Although, there were some skills, such as body language, and eye contact, that didn’t change from the first speech to the final speech. Well during the progress of the speech, I became better at projecting my voice to the audience (well, you might hear that my projection in my final speech is smaller than the first one.) I think of that because I was so nervous at my first speech, but in the final speech, I wasn’t that nervous, so i think I stated my speech smoothly. Another thing I developed are the fillers. In the first speech, I repeated some of the words, but in the final speech, the fillers became more less.

What are the strengths and weaknesses in your final speech?

My strengths in the speech are projecting my voice, eye-contacting, and not “reading” from my cue cards. I think I projected my voice that the audience (my classmates) can listen to my speech easily. I also consider that I looked at the audience, which I didn’t also read my palm card. But in the other hand, my weaknesses in the speech are repeating my words. I think I repeated what I said such as “read books…read an average of four books”. Additionally, another weakness is having a “hook”. I think I made a hook well, but it didn’t made the audience think.

Is your speech successful? Why or why not?  (Refer to key terminology)

In my opinion, I think my speech was 75% successful, and 25% unsuccessful. It is because I think I was good at projecting my voices, sometimes glanced at the audience, and not reading my palm card. Also, I didn’t become nervous so I stated my speech smoothly. But I think I didn’t succeed since I repeated some words, and had some fillers, which I didn’t want to happen in my speech.

What could you do to further improve your process and speech?

If I could do this again, I would like to make my speech more detailed, and practice a lot so that there wouldn’t be any fillers, such as “um…”, “and…”, “yeah…”, and “like…” I also would like to make a really good “hook” at the first, because I didn’t start well with the hook in the final speech.

I liked watching “Singing in the Rain” because I liked how Gene Kelly used a lot of props and himself wisely to show his expressions and feeling. For example, he tap-danced, closed umbrella, and hang around near the pole to show that he’s happy with the rain. Besides, he also used expression like facial expression to show the detail of how he’s happy with the rain. Gene Kelly also moved the limited space since it’s an movie by moving a lot in one small place and went, again moving a lot and so on. But when he’s moving to another place, he still dances. Those are the points that I liked how Gene Kelly danced in “Singing in the rain”.

On last Friday, we had a Drama class and we practiced our LAMDA speech. We practiced our speech using palm cards, which is a palm-sized card with some keywords of your speech so that in-case you forgot your speech, you can look at it. Well, this is my speech practice;

6C Masaki-LAMDA from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

My drama teacher said that my body language, audibility, clarity and tone are OK, but I think I need to add a conclusion and compare my important person with me. Also, I think I moved my card a lot which was distracting my speech.

We finished our LAMDA exam, and I think I half succeeded and half failed. The reason that I half succeeded is that I did better at the exam than the practice speech in drama class. On another hand, I half failed because I made some mistakes in my speech. To summarize, I want to see the result of my exam.

Today, I had a LAMDA Exam on about 2:20pm. Well, it was supposed to be 2:05pm, but one of the grade 6 broke his bone, and did his exam after lunch, so it became late. The exam was held in the 2nd floor of the Gym Annex. I before Kate and after Lucas.

In the exam room , there was an old, but friendly man sitting on a chair and said hello to me, and checked that if I am the right person. Then, I started my speech. Because I was nervous, I made some mistakes and grammars. Next, I sat on a chair which is facing to the examiner. We first conversate about Hanshin Tigers, then Baseball, then my favorite sports, and it last landed at how to play soccer tennis. After I’m done, I was happy and got less stressed. When I went back to my class, the class was already finished, so my friend was holding my stuff. I said thank you to my friend, and went off to my other class.

To summarize, next time, I will not make mistakes in next year’s LAMDA.

Hi everyone! This is a video of my hobbies and interests. Please enjoy watching at it.

Masaki 6C from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

For my perspective, I didn’t even recognized that my speech was just one minute, so I think I had a sense of accomplishment. But still, I have points that I need to improve on. First, I think I need to tuck my undershirt in my T-shirt, so that I would have a proper clothing. Secondly, I need to make better on not mumbling because I sometimes said ‘A~~~’ between sentences. Thirdly, I also need to work on my pace because my pace was fast, I didn’t spoke correctly. Overall, I think I had a successful speech, but require to set goals.