In this video, the narrator constantly maintains eye contact with the audience. This makes it possible for listeners who see the speaker not to doubt his professionalism and draw attention to the person himself. For example, at the beginning of the speech, Michael Todd highlights certain moments of his remarks with the expressiveness of address and constant contact with the audience (TBN, 2021, 1:04-1:08). In addition to eye contact, the speaker uses facial expressions quite actively, which would probably be better to change. Too active facial expressions resemble antics and can alienate the viewer. My conclusions are based on my perception of people when communicating.
Gestures, as well as facial expressions, are used by the speaker when presenting the information. He uses body language to attract the audience’s attention and somewhere to emphasize parts of the story. From 2:40 to 2:50 (TBN, 2021), the narrator assumes a specific pose, waves his hand, and actively uses facial expressions. Thus, he wants to focus the audience’s attention on one particular place of his speech and emphasize its importance. The speaker still needs to moderate the number of gestures and movements on the stage during the presentation of information. Constant movements confuse listeners with thoughts and make them look for the speaker with their eyes all the time. Nevertheless, I believe that, in general, the speaker demonstrates himself from the professional side and even nonverbally correctly highlights the primary information.
As for the verbal delivery, in this aspect, the speaker did not use jargon, ethnic vernaculars, and other phrases and words that can make speech incomprehensible or negatively perceived. The speaker’s speech is simple, so a person far from the topic under discussion can understand what is being discussed and join the hearing. I listened attentively to the speaker’s speech and noticed that his monologue was constructed correctly enough to make it easy for people to perceive it by ear. Gestures, facial expressions, and movements complement the emotional speech of the speaker. The speaker gives examples from his own life, allowing viewers to understand some aspects of his speech.
The speaker is too loud and emotionally highlights those parts of speech on which he wants to focus the public’s attention. This is what I, as a listener, would like to change in his speech. It would be more comfortable to listen to it without a regular change of tone. The speaker talks about the signs that God gave him and about their imaginary dialogue. To highlight the unique parts of his monologue, he changes his voice, tone, sound, which occurs quite often throughout the speech (TBN, 2021, 6:05-6:20). Undoubtedly, I do not like the monotonous presentation of information, as this immediately creates a situation in which the public loses its interest in the discussion, but in this case, the speaker is too emotional, and this is reflected in his monologue.
In conclusion, despite the indicated shortcomings in the speaker’s monologue, it was still interesting to listen to him, and he could keep the audience’s attention. Indeed, I would take some aspects of his speech as an example for myself since he will be able to give information to the public so that he receives feedback in the form of exclamations or laughter right during his speech. Still, I would pay attention to some shortcomings and try to fix them.
Reference
TBN. (2021). Michael Todd: God Will Confirm What He Tells You (Part 1) | TBN [Video]. Web.