Do You Enjoy Speeches??

Persuasive writing is disliked by many people across the country. From my experience, after being informed that they will be doing speeches and persuasive writing, there is a collective chorus of groaning throughout the class. And, before you say "Well from my experience" hear me out. Elections aren't a two-way conversation. People put their vote out and the majority wins; they don't ask for others' opinions. I believe that persuasive writing is the hardest topic of writing, and I am sure many of you agree. Many people fear public speaking, which is why many of us dislike speeches. Personally, I not only dislike the public speaking that is involved; but I also find it difficult to form an opinion.

Many people fear public speaking as they feel judged. If when you speak publicly, fear arises; the real fear may be from the worry or embarrassment of rejection. A couple of years ago a 15-year-old high school student posted a tweet saying "stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to". This tweet received more than 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes. This 15-year-old's post proves that many people agree and dislike public speaking or in this case speeches. Teenagers feel more judged and insecure as they can't control what's happening and they have yet to gain confidence. This is because teenagers' hormones run higher; hormones determine our mood and our mood determines the way we think.

Persuasive writing is hard because we have a bias against change. Although often we hear statements like "The only constant is change" or "Variety is the spice of life" it is proven by scientists and ourselves that truthfully we don't like change. For example, when your friend gets a new haircut, at first, you don't like it. Following the points above, we do these speeches but how often do we actually do anything about it? We are trying to convince people of something but how many people are already convinced and how many people don't even think about it? We write these speeches to try to convince people of our point but we just think of them as boring, dumb speeches. To sum up these points, we don't like change; we write speeches to change things and convince others but, we are too used to 'the normal' that we don't do anything unless it actually affects us.

Persuasive writing is difficult. For instance, some people find it hard to write lots while others find it hard to write little. With speeches, you get a certain amount of time to speak, but that means not getting all the facts and details. I, personally find it hard to remove writing for a piece as I have come to get used to it; as I said before we have a bias against change. In contrast, teachers tell you to add stuff and remove other stuff which doesn't get you anywhere. They tell you that you are missing stuff and other stuff doesn't need to be there. When teachers tell you to add stuff and remove other stuff it doesn't actually take the time amount or word amount down as you are removing one and adding another. In addition to this, we get nervous which adds more time to our speech which may lower our mark.

In short, many people find persuasion hard. Ending this speech, many people find it difficult, don't do anything about it or fear it. It is not only hard but it doesn't make any difference. We don't do anything about it. Majority of the class do the speeches because they are told to, not because they actually want to make a difference. Public speaking affects many people around the world.