If you teach English or Writing, (or any subject that requires students to communicate in any way that should be comprehended by other human beings,) you can use this video.
After you've written helpful comments, after you've referred students to the Writing Center for LOC help, after you've diagrammed sentences, after you've shown students how to bookmark the dictionary in their browsers, after you've gone on a tirade and preached from "The Elements of Style" for an entire class... (OK, that last one might be just me,) you can use something like this to reinforce your efforts and give you a moment to regroup.
Enjoy your summer, knowing this video is now in your arsenal for next term!
Now.. if we can just find a similar video on APA or MLA formatting...
This week, the Baltimore Ravens meet the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl. One of these teams boasts the player who has what may be the most emotional pre-game speech/dance combination in NFL history. I'm speaking of the Ravens' Ray Lewis. Ray's pre-game activities could be a valid artifact for communications and speech classes - it seems to be perfect for talking about occasion and the place of emotion in speech-making.
But what about all those weeks when Ray was injured? Did you ever wonder who did the pre-game speeches during his absence? Well Sports Friends offers a humorous take on that situation. In this (fictional?) situation Ray Rice approaches Joe Flacco to give the speech, and the results are a sort of Communications/Speech Class workshop on what NOT to do. I played this clip for my class and asked them to respond with comments on what went wrong with Joe's attempts - and to suggest fixes.
Watch the clip and see what you think.
Some student responses were:
" Joe shouldn't have shown that he was nervous and that he wasn't happy about giving the speech."
"To make his speech more effective, Joe should have used more passionate
words that male sports men can relate to and that trigger the right
emotions. Sentences like, 'You only have this one moment to show that
you are powerful, that you have worked, sweated and bled to achieve
success.'"
"He started quoting a movie that no one would know. He should consider his audience and what they would watch."
"Joe was referencing things his audience couldn't relate with. To be more
effective he should have related more to his audience by referencing
things he knew they were familiar with..."
"Joe was not enthusiastic enough to boost the morale of his teammates..."
"He didn't need to introduce himself to people who already knew him."
You might build on these and other comments to talk about ethos, pathos, logos, kairos, audience, culturally-sensitive speech (the last remarks crossed the anti-semitic line, ouch.)
And, depending on the outcome of the game, you might let the students guess whether Joe or Ray Lewis gave the pre-game talk.
