Let's talk briefly about what you're going to be learning and doing in this course, and I think probably the best way to do that is to talk about our course schedule, and course assignments. Now at the broadest level, this course is about writing and performing inspirational ceremonial speeches. That's the goal. Now, we're going to prepare this in a systemic way. Following the basic rhetorical canon use and antiquity. Invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. So, we begin in week one with invention. That's just coming up with speech content. Ceremonial speeches praise their subjects. So in week one, we'll start by identifying the core values we want to associate with our subject. And then once we have those values, reliability, dedication, whatever. Once we have those values, then we'll look to how best to discuss those values. Now you might do this with quotations and evidence, but you area probably also going to include some stories. We want good stories. And so in this first week, we spend a large portion of our time working on story telling. But then, we move on to week two. So having figured out the main pieces of the speech, the values, the support, the stories, then we need to assemble this ideas in a compelling way and that's arrangement. So in this week, we examine some strategies for organizing speeches. We'll work on openers and closers. We'll talk a little bit about some specific concerns here for introductory speeches, for eulogies or world speeches. Basically, this week, we're getting stuff put together. And so at this point, we should have an outline for our speech, then we need to write that up. That style and that's what we're going to be doing in week three. So in week three, we'll look to stylistical language us. This is just basic things to add, so that the speech sounds right and feels right and that's also what we're going to be doing in this week with tone. Basically, trying to figure out what's the emotional shading on the language that we're using. So, we'll talk a little bit in this week about manuscripting your speech. Because at the end of this point, we kind of want to have a draft, then we take that draft. And we move it to week four. And now, we can focus on memory and delivery. So ceremonial speaking might be extemporaneous, but it's often read and, or memorized. So in this fourth week, we'll talk about reading from manuscript, memorizing speeches. Also in this week, we'll talk about humor use. When and how you should use humor in your speeches and then we'll end that week with some general discussion of speech performance. And then finally, we've got the last week. But where all we're really doing there is wrapping up the course and that's when you submit your speech assignment. So, that's a basic structure of the course. Now we move through those sections, so that you can practice your skills in the course assignments and there are three basic types of assignments in this class. Speech assignments, quizzes and analysis. And right now, I'm going to talk about all the assignments in this class. You don't have to do all of these. In order to pass the class, you only need to complete the required assignments and you can see which ones those are by looking on the course website. But let's go ahead and talk about the assignments. We begin with speech assignments. These are going to be speeches of various length. In fact, we start off with a short speech introducing yourself. And really, what that assignments is there for is it allows you to practice some good delivery. Get to know one another and practice the peer review system that we're going to use in this course. We also have speech outline assignments and the outline you're drafting up a basic plan for your talk, and then you submit it for peer review. So basically, you can give and receive some outline feedback. The ceremonial speech though is the main assignment for this course. In that assignment, you focus on praising a subject with moving an eloquent language and we're going to spend multiple weeks building and practicing this speech. And in fact, the class is mostly about those speech assignments. So it's the speech class, but we also have quizzes without weekly quizzes. These aren't there simply to test your memory, they're also trying to ask you to evaluate different ways of selecting values or organizing this features or phrasing an idea. So, we've got quizzes and then we also have analysis assignments. Now I include these, because I firmly believe that one of the best ways to get better at performing a speech is to get better at listening to speeches. And so, what you do in an analysis assignment is you watch a speech. You evaluate it. You read my analysis and the analysis of others. So, that's it. That's basically the course. That's an overview, the course schedule and the course assignments. So, let's go ahead and get started on it. [MUSIC]
