How did writing and acting the soliloquy help you better understanding your character?

For writing the soliloquy, I need to think in my character’s logic. I also analyzed the way she feels and she thinks. When I was writing the soliloquy, I was considering what would my girl say, how would she speak. I have to get rid of myself. And I continued to tell myself that I’m not myself any more; I’m Leia Lille right now.

Although she is just a very normal person, she still has her special characteristic.

She hates to be special, and she is afraid when she was under many people’s sight.

Therefore, I chose a scene when she was surrounded by a lot of people. For her, that scene was a nightmare, since everyone was staring at her with plenty of curiosity.

When I was sitting on the stage as Leia, I did feel audiences’ curious sights. They wanted to know what I would act. I usually feel uncomfortable when I’m in the same situation as well.

I found that I actually created Leia Lille based on my own characteristic, and I didn’t even notice that until I understand her better by writing and acting the soliloquy.

How does it help with public speaking skills?

I think the biggest challenge for me is that I need to act on the stage. And I cannot be myself anymore during my performing. As I was a little girl, I hardly can do these things. However, after 3 months’ public speaking class, I feel more comfortable when I’m standing on the stage.

Acting the soliloquy needs me to keep my face on, whatever my character did something silly. That can help me to keep calm when I say something wrong during my speech. I can ignore all of my audiences and keep on my great performance!!

What did you act as when you performed in the “Hitchhiker” game?

I acted like a psychopath with Parkinson. And I was always jumping when I sat in the car. When I began to speak, I jumped more terribly. And it looked like I was riding a huge house and it was running so fast so that I was bumping so hard.

Why did you act that way?

The reason why I acted like that is because that I thought it would be very hard for the driver to act if they had to copy other two people’s action as the same time. And of course, that would be absolutely very funny if they really did act it out. Eventually, 3 people did that and everybody was laughing. That’s what I want!

How did you feel?

Obviously, that was a very funny game. I felt very happy and excited. I laughed all the time. Every time someone new got in the car with some new movements, everyone boost into laughter. It was like watching psychopaths in the hospital, and every passenger in the car was an extremely horribly funny psychopaths. When I was on the stage-in the car, I actually felt a little bit embraced and nerves since I had to do something really silly and I really didn’t know what to do at the very beginning.

But when I started to jump from my chair, and every body boosted into laughter, there was nothing to afraid any more. It was just a little game! And all I need to do was to enjoy it.

How can you apply improvisation to your acting?

As far as I concern, two of the most important things about improvisation are that I need to think quickly and I need to be very creative as well because audience all like interesting acting and they definitely don’t want to wait for a long time until I come up with something that is actually really boring. Therefore, to apply improvisation, I think I can prepare some good and creative ideas, which can fit many situations. And that won’t take a long time. Moreover, I can practice to improve and analyze other people’s acting to find methods, which can help me apply improvisation.

What did you like about the debate unit? Dislike? Learn?

Just like what I have written down in my first reflection of this debate unit, I really like debates. Since debate is a type of discussion and communication, we can exchange our ideas, opinions, perspectives, etc. with each other. During the debate, we can actually learn many new knowledge from others who against with. It’s also a chance to improve my oral English and public speaking skills. That’s why and what I like debate.

As we all know that every debate has its winner and loser, no one can deny that. And that’s the part, which I highly dislike. I really don’t want to be the one who lose the battle because I think that I have the ability to convince people and I believe myself. But I lost 2 debates during the entire competition. That sometimes makes me mad.

Also from losing debates, I learnt how to control myself when I was mad about this.

During the preparation, I received plenty of totally new information. For instance, I knew what are communism and democracy when I was debating and searching information about them. Information can expand our horizon. That’s actually very good for us.

Moreover, I learnt how to search appropriate statistics and data from appropriate websites. And those statistics can strongly backup one’s side. However, it can easily become rival’s tool if the statistics are incorrect.

In brief, I think debate is more interesting than speech unit!




What are you looking forward to in the acting unit?

As I just had my first class of acting unit, I really like acting unit because translated Gibberish is really funny!! Sometimes people play tricks on others with that and that’s sort of annoying people though.

I remember another game called ‘ Honey I love you’ and that’s also very interesting. I really hope that we can have more games like those during the acting unit. Also, I guess we may have little drama in this unit and I hope I can do well with that.

Mr. Manno told us that acting could help us improve our public speaking skills since we need to be devil advocacy sometimes in a debate, and good acting skills can help us with that.

I hope that after this unit, my public speaking skills can become better and I can control myself better during a speech or a debate.

As a result, I guess that acting unit will full of fun!

We had our final debate on Monday! WOW!

The exciting debate is between Team Mother( Jemie, Billy, Crystal, and Amy) and Team Michael Jackson( Michael, Judith, and Grace). The debate topic is about which one is better, democracy or communism.

Team Mother supported democracy while Team Michael Jackson was on communism’s side.

Since communism is just an ideal society ideology, Team Mother thought that it was meaningless to have this debate actually. However, Team Michael Jackson strongly disagreed with this opinion as they thought that we are debating about its benefits, which had nothing to do with if it was unachievable.

Moreover, from Team Mother’s perspective, democracy had a longer history and it was now the major type of government all over the world. Every citizen leads democracy. People can be freer. But Team Michael Jackson thought that in a communism society, people would be treated more fairly and equally. People would gain things if they need and they would have the same amount of work.

To against that, Team Mother put out the opinion, which is about human nature. People are selfish; people are jealous; people have emotions. Communism wouldn’t become reality unless people stopped against each other any more. If we can really do that, then it would be meaningless to have this debate.

In brief, it was really interesting and congratulations to Team Michael Jackson for wining the Master Debaters prize. lol

Our team Team Mother( Billy, Crystal, Jemie and Amy) had a debate with Anonymous Team (Yuki, Hugo and Gene) about the topic ‘Should uniform be allowed in school.’ Our team is on the negative side, which was against Anonymous Team.

Our team thought that wearing uniform would kill students’ creativity because uniforms are the same and ugly style. And it would forbid students’ sense of art and fashion. They cannot have their own style of wearing clothes.

From Anonymous Team’s perspective, if students wear casual clothes, they may show off, since students can well fancy clothes. But our team thought that wearing uniform still could allow students to show off by their shoes, necklace, earring and even their hairstyle. Anonymous Team also agreed that wearing uniform is one way to show the school culture and can be easy for teachers to recognize and organize.

Michael Jackson Team had a debate about ‘ overpopulation is good.’  with Which Team (Sy, Alan, Kelly and Elsie). Michael Jackson supported that overpopulation is totally bad, because if there are too many people, our mother planet will be destroyed. There will be lack of every resource because there are too many people using the limited resources. And more pollution is going to emerge since the increasing of the population. There’s not going to be enough food to feed everyone and actually the food is not enough for everyone nowadays. Also, if there won’t be enough employment for everyone, then many people will have to stay home and that will give not only their parents but also the government pressure to feed them.

Which Team thought overpopulation is a good phenomenon because if there are more people, the chance of having geniuses will increase. Then the world can develop faster and better. Everyone want to have more Einsteins and Da Vincis in this world!

Which Team (Sy, Alan, Elsie and Kelly) and Michael Jackson Team (Michael, Judith and Grace) debated on the topic of ' Chinese education is better than American education.' Which Team is on the affirmative side and Michael Jackson Team opposes this opinion. 

Which Team (Sy, Alan, Elsie and Kelly) is the negative side about having a girlfriend of boyfriend in school while Not This Team (Leon, Jenny and Sue) is supporting the affirmative side.

The strongest point Which Team mentioned is that students still cannot control themselves very well since they are still adolescence. They may do something really bad and harmful to their boyfriend or girlfriend if they had one. Just as Sy said, they may have sex and teenagers are not allowed to do so. In brief, they wanted to convince people that having a boyfriend of a girlfriend would distract our conscious.

From Not This Team, they thought that having a boyfriend or a girlfriend is having a good partner analogously for study and many other aspects in their daily life. They wanted to prove that having a boyfriend or girlfriend will help people to study better and live better eventually.

The topic between Anonymous Team (Gene, Hugo and Yuki) and Michael Jackson Team (Michael, Judith and Grace) is should ESL students only speak English in school. Anonymous Team highly disagreed with this topic as they think speaking only English won’t have very much advantage because that it’s harder to understand in English than in Chinese. Also, using Chinese seldom to explain some big words can help people understand better and save more time.

 Michael Jackson Team really agreed with the topic. Since Chinese people began to speak Chinese in their childhood, they showed us that a language environment is a very important part of learning a whole new language. And only using English can provide us the language environment and help us boost our English level. The example they used is that the reason why we are now able to debate in English is that we all speak English in school these days.

As far as I concerned, debate is a type of discussion and communication. Debating is really a good opportunity to exchange everyone’s idea, thoughts, and perspectives with each other. From the debates, I learned more about my fellow classmates opinions of some tricky questions and impressible issues that actually exist in the society nowadays. Since I have known about my classmates’ thoughts, I can know how to get alone better with them. From that, I can say that debates are also a method to develop our precious friendship.

The debate topic I had last class is ‘Should Homosexual be allowed to marry in China?’ I’m on the negative side. Although we lost our battle, we still have strong arguments. For instance, Chinese culture won’t let the homosexual become legal and there will be a problem of ageing society if homosexual married without having any baby.

In brief, debate is really interesting and also makes me feel excited!

How well do you that you performed in the speech? How can you improve?

I think I did well. My topic met almost everyone’s favor and I think it’s really an appropriate topic. It can help me to persuade my audience easier.

I have all logos, pathos, ethos in my speech and according to the audience, it really affect them.

But Mr. Manno told me that I could still improve my pathos. In my speech I have my frustrated experience with the Internet as my pathos. And pathos is the emotion thing. But I didn’t show my emotion very much. I need to act more apparently so that my emotion will influence my audience. That’s one part I can improve.

The second one is about my intonation. I think I speak too fast to let everyone follow my words. This makes no help to persuade my audience but only let people feel confused about what I’m saying. This situation also happened in my previous speech. So it’s a really serious problem waiting to be solved.

In brief, speak slowly! Speak clearly! Use emotion to influence the audience! If I can make that come true, my speech will be better!

What did you like/dislike about the ‘speech’ unit and why?

I like to learn about how to use logos, and ethos. Especially the logos part, because I really like data, statistics, evidence and facts. I LOVE that sort of things. I feel really delighted when I speak out those things. People cannot be against to the reality! Actions speak louder than words! Ethos is also another good part. People cannot refuse to accept their own background information. Using their background to let them be convinced and make their ideology change is a good method in a persuasive speech.

The aspect, which I dislike, is pathos. I know that pathos is also the main way to convince my audience. Moreover, according to Mr. Manno’s suggestion, I should be more emotional when I was doing my persuasive speech. Apparently, I wanted to and I’ve planned about how should I act on the stage. But when I actually standing on the stage, I failed.  I’m not a good actress. I really cannot act! I feel so hard to express my emotions. I cannot act out what I feel naturally. It’s so weird to act exaggeratedly for me. I really want to be a good actress though.

@Shanghai China
This Public Speaking assignment is for the Public Speaking Course on 9/19/2013,Friday,Period 7 given by Mr.Manno.

The persuasive speech I chose was Simon Sinek's How great leaders inspire action

Here's the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Now talking about the methods that the speaker used.I think the main methods are,first, repeat his main idea over and over.Second,he gave loads of examples, the successful ones, the failure ones. Many many examples in every aspects. Truly enough for him to support his ideology.

“People don't buy what you do;they buy why you do it."
I can even recite it easily now. Why? Because I' ve heard about this sentence through the whole speech quite times. Why he did this? Because that's the main idea the speaker wanted us to know, to understand.As we all know people repeat things in order to remember them better.In the same way, the more times he said that, the sentence will stick in our minds more. There's an ancient saying: "The meaning of the book will become clear if you read it hundreds of times." Also, this sentence's meaning will become clear after we remembering it, listening to it hundreds times as well. It's a really good method to help people understand and know what the topic the speaker is talking about.
He also used a diagram“ Why How What",  some scientific research in biology, and also some specific statistics about majesty to not only support his opinion, but also directly explain his main opinion.

Mentioned about the examples before. Besides the explanation about the theory, the other part of the speech was filled up with lots of specific examples. When we are argumentative composition, we usually use examples to sustain our ideology. This method is also conductive for a persuasive speech. The examples which the speaker used are: the success of Apple, the Wright Brothers, and Martin Luther King;  the failure of Tivo, and another unknown people who also attempted to make an aeroplane as the Wright Brothers did. 
The speaker used these examples to compare. The difference between that unknown people's ambition and the Wright Brothers' is that the motivation of that people was to gain money, gain fame but the Wright Brothers just wanted to make their dream which implanted in their mind since their childhood. Compared Apple with Tivo, basicly, it was their way about how to advert their products' difference.Apple told everyone WHY they invented iPhone, iPod, and so on. What they did was just for prove their ideas. But Tivo just told people what they made. The consequence is that Apple succeed, Tivo is still struggling.