Public Speaking (Summer 2019)/Commemorative Peer-Analysis

Over the course of the quarter, you will be required to analyze your classmates’ speeches. Your peer analysis assignments are listed on the speaker order sheet. You will be required to provide oral criticism following a peer’s speech. These peer analyses serve both a critical and speech function.

Like a number of other arts, we refine our public speaking abilities through a mixture of instruction, practice, and imitation. As such, critically examining your peers’ speeches provides you another venue for thinking about how to adapt to different rhetorical situations. Additionally, individual speakers benefit immensely from articulate feedback from their audiences and you get to do another small speech.

Your peer analyses are speech assignments. While they are not as long as your other graded speeches, they are speech assignments. In fact, short two-point speeches are some of the most common speeches you will deliver.

By performing peer analyses, students should refine their abilities to:

• critically assess speeches.
• quickly formulate a concise speech with two main points.
• provide examples to clarify the main points.
• adopt a conversational tone while still looking polished.

Arrangement

These speeches are short two-point speeches. Points I and II should take roughly 20-35 seconds. Overall, each peer analysis should be about 60 to 90 seconds.

Your analysis should address the ideas laid out in the assignment rubric.

1. What the speaker did well: In this section you should identify a strength of the speech. This should be stated as a clear main point (e.g. “In his speech, Tom did an excellent job of stating clear and memorable main points.”). You should then provide one or two examples from the speech to illustrate your point (e.g. “For example, Tom’s second point was “Retrofitting the existing Alaskan Way Viaduct is significantly less expensive”).
2. What the speaker could still work on: As above, you should identify one area of the speech that was not clear and provide an example to illustrate what you mean. Please remember that you will be hindering your classmate’s future public speaking success by being untruthful, vague, or indirect about opportunities for improvement. By the same token, you should provide constructive criticism intended to help the speaker improve.