Kelsey Lisowski McGough Section HB Oral & Visual Reflection 12/12/13 Sand Creek Massacre Oral & Visual

Reflection The oral and visual aspects of English 250H contributed significantly to the knowledge I gained in this class this semester. These two parts of the class encompassed many of the important concepts that we learned over the course of the semester. For this part of the class, I worked on a PowerPoint proposal for a memorial that, if accepted, would commemorate the lives of those lost in the Sand Creek Massacre. Through this presentation I developed both oral and visual skills, because I had to speak on the topic and use PowerPoint in order to add visual appeal to the presentation. I chose my Sand Creek Massacre presentation as a sample to reflect on because it required quality oral and visual work and it was one of my favorite assignments that I had to complete this semester. I put a lot of work into both the visual and oral aspects of the assignment, because I had to make not only create the project, but make sure it appropriately addressed the audience and appealed to their needs and wants. Specifically with the oral aspect of the presentation, I had to be sure that I used emotional appeal, or pathos, in order to convince my audience of the proposal because the material we covered in the presentation was of a very serious nature. I was sure to also use logos and ethos to support my pathos, because this helped to ensure that I was conveying that I was not only passionate about the topic, but also knew what I was talking about and my proposal was actually viable. I had to make a few changes throughout the course of the project in order to ensure that this occurred. In order to do this, I altered some of my ideas in order to convince the audience that the proposal was a good idea. The major thing I did was rewriting my introductory remarks for the presentation. Instead of immediately introducing my team and our proposal, I instead started with a narrative that related to the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre. My introduction eventually introduced the project, but first explained the serious implications of the Sand Creek Massacre and how multitudes of people were affected. Through this introduction I was using mainly pathos, a good strategy for the beginning of a presentation. Throughout the rest of the presentation I maintained a serious but passionate tone on the subject. I was professional throughout the entire thing and genuinely believe I made an impact on my audience. As for the visual portion of the proposal, the presentation I made consisted of a PowerPoint that primarily consisted of images that related to my topic. While there was text on nearly every slide, I kept it to a minimum so the words didnt detract

from the photos. I put a series of impactful images on the PowerPoint with the intention of persuading the audience of my proposal. These images were also very professional, because I didnt want to ruin my credibility, or ethos, as a presenter. Considering your audience is very important when creating both oral and visual presentations, and I took this into serious account when creating this assignment. I realized that the content I was covering would be very different from the content Id present to a different audience, and changed my presentation as needed. Overall, I think my presentation was very strong in both the visual and oral aspects, and comprises some of the best work Ive completed all semester.