Hearing people talk about their life experiences can be very affective and influential to others. Sharing those unique situations in a creative technique will undoubtedly help us accomplish some change in our society. Those going out on stage are usually considered to be brave and intelligent speakers; therefore, they are able to persuade or inform the audience and modify their way of thinking. This is why it is important to be fully knowledgeable about the chosen topic and to be well-prepared for its presentation in order to generate a huge impact that will lead the society one step forward to the better life.
Tracy McMillan was one of those positive speakers passionate about teaching people about the importance of having better relationships with the humankind. She had self-confidence, a wonderful personality, and acquired all the information needed to come up with a well-developed speech. It was a well-constructed and organized talk about her connection with her family and how it manipulated her way of building relationships. Passing through all that hard time of being put in a foster care, while her mother was too busy being an alcoholic and her father was a criminal taken to prison for twenty years, made her feel isolated: she had no one to care for her in life. These difficult childhood conditions raised a stranger within her, who now cannot be identified easily, and so put her through many unstable marriages. Therefore and after a long time, McMillan came up with a solution that helped her to get back on her feet and stand up for herself, which of course provided her a new successful life. This is why she is now on stage, to share her story and present her idea to the crowd.
Tracy McMillan was a motivational and inspirational speaker that guided the audience into a chronological organizational path, so to begin with explaining her life story situations as she was growing up and what consequences she had faced due to those circumstances. Tracy tried to involve people into her issues in a way that they could relate to themselves. This was done by mentioning one nice joke that basically explained her entire topic of the speech and what she was telling to enlighten the audience with. She had a miraculous talent of being able to grab the audience’s attention.
Nevertheless, she had a nice personal character that she definitely used to make the speech more interesting. After delivering the topic to the audience, she offered them the solution that she personally tried and noticed that it made a difference to her life perceptions. She persuaded them to adopt this habit of marrying themselves at first in order to be able to make better relations with others later. Tracy made the idea so clear and agreeable that for sure many people adopted it immediately before she was even done with her speech. She was well-prepared and organized with her ideas, which made the speech very smooth and acceptable by the people with no hesitations.
It seems to me that McMillan had a great look, voice, and personality. I thought that she is very interesting and I could relate myself to her, since I have passed through some similar situations. I could see and feel exactly what she was talking about. I seriously thought that her theory of marrying yourself was amazing and could be effective if it was applied correctly. She had the character and the competence that were necessary to deliver a persuasive speech. Moreover, I found her speech credible since it is her life experience that she was sharing while referring to some quotations during her talk.
On the other hand, her speech was also emotional due to the hard times she passed through. McMillan can also be considered unique as she was using her own sayings in the context of the speech; for example, she said, “The places where you have the biggest challenges in your life, become the places where you have the most to give” (McMillan, 2014). This proves that she has some sort of an artistic use of the language, where she can summarize her situation in a couple of sentences. Furthermore, her vocal enthusiasm was great. She didn’t go through the act of vocal segregates, which could have possibly stopped her from being clear and attainable. Yet, she used her vocal characterizers and was laughing or crying at the right moment. Also, her voice was showing confidence and the desire to change the behaviors of herself and of the others. In addition, her nonverbal behaviors were good enough for the speech. Her physical appearance was suitable with a nice dress, her eyes were gazing at the audience all the time to engage them in the speech, and her facial expressions indicated how she was feeling during the time of the speech. All this made the crowd interact with her a lot. And at the end when she was about to cry her face looked sad and her eyes became watery.
All in all, I think that Tracy MacMillan was an affective speaker who has persuaded me to follow her theory. I totally agreed with her idea and felt that it could positively impact my life. She was so clear with her speech, which made me feel comfortable to listen to it and gain certain benefits from it. Moreover, Tracy was also effective in monitoring all the important aspects of a good speech, such as the knowledge she has about her topic, the vocal enthusiasm, and her nonverbal actions. Added to all that, the speech was well-organized and followed the chronological aspect in order to accomplish the mission of spreading knowledge. I think that the speech was awesome and I wouldn’t mind listening to her speeches again.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3fIZuW9P_M
