Lecture 1.1.3 – Communicating with Passion and Feeling
Spend at least 5 mins on this activity
Go through the activity to the end
Lecture Overview
This lecture will focus on how to hold an audience's attention with personal passion.
As listeners we respond to passion especially when it comes from the speaker’s life experience. When a teacher shares their personal life experience with us, we listen, don't we? We are all automatically interested. It’s why we listen to music, or when a grandparent shares the story of their growing up in a time before cell phones and the Internet.
Passion comes from believing in what you want to communicate and communicating it with feeling. How is that done?
- Don’t Rush. Rushing tells us that the speaker is probably nervous and wants to get the presentation over with. In the next activity you’ll see and hear a young African American basketball player talk about how her life was changed by a death. She speaks slowly and deliberately.
- Pay close attention to the tempo/speed at which she speaks. Notice her pausing and the effect that is having on you the listener. (Teacher Models)
- Notice how her face changes expression depending on changes in her tone. (Teacher Models)
- What is that tone? Tone is voice inflection (going up or down, loud or soft) (Teacher Models)
- The importance of Eye Contact. What is the impact of being looked at directly by the speaker? We usually look directly at someone we are talking to, but what about when we address a class or an audience. Where do you look to make the audience feel you are speaking to them?