I usually teach delivery as we go along in Scientific and Technical Presentations, and tend to rely on speeches as examples because duh, look at the course title. But last semester I taught a consolidated lesson on it after the students had done a couple of presentations, with the thought that they could compare their previous performances with the artifacts we were analyzing. This version also incorporated quite a few pop culture examples. They understood the point a lot better than they did with the all-speeches version, but they also said that they should have had this lecture at the beginning of the semester. So this time I came out of the gate with two days on Cadence. We’re using pop examples at the start and then segueing into straight-up oratory.

For analyzing ethos and physical delivery, we looked at two of Apple’s Mac vs PC commercials and Weird Al’s White and Nerdy. The Apple ads seemed to work particularly well. White and Nerdy went really well last semester, not so much this time. As examples of ethos and verbal delivery, we examined What’s He Building In There (Tom Waits), the intro to Make My Funk the P-Funk (Parliament), and I Know You (Rollins). To bring the two concepts together, we analyzed Talaam Acey’s True Lies. I was impressed with the discussion that surrounded that one; I did my usual song-and-dance about being forensic rhetoricians who analyze rhetorical elements, not personal politics, and they all came up with smart, insightful things to say. We’ll bring all this to bear on “I Have a Dream” next.

An aside: This is the fourth time I’ve taught this course, but the first time I’ve taught it with low enrollment. There are 7 of us instead of 20-25, because it’s an off-peak class than meets until 3 p.m. MWF. (Nobody wants to be on campus for a required course on public speaking late on Friday afternoons.) The vibe is entirely different, of course, but I’m thinking it’ll work out well with this particular group of students. We’ll see.