Its called "Organize Your Speech"
Good Afternoon friends. I am here to present my second prepared speech and the topic is "Writing Effective Reviews"
What is a review? By definition, it means a critical examination of something - now that something could be a book, a movie, a music album, a consumer product - just about anything. And by this definition, all of us are inherent reviewers. There are so many times when we give our feedback on many things for the benefit of friends and family. But there are some reviews that stay in mind and help us while deciding whether to buy or use a particular product or not - and why does this happen - due to the effectiveness of the review.
To illustrate, I would take the example of a book and try to explain how to go about writing its effective review. It’s a book that I read recently called The Audacity of Hope - the second book authored by Barack Obama, who now happens to be the President of the USA. If you noticed, I just made the introductory line of my review by mentioning the USP of the book, the name of its author. This means, your review should begin with the specialty of the book, could be its name, its storyline, plot or the fact that it has been adapted into a successful movie or that it was on the bestseller list for so many weeks.
Next comes the theme of the book along with its writing style, and how it is different from other books of the same genre. The Audacity of Hope is basically about politics - about the world in general and US in particular. It gives us a glimpse of the history of American politics, its current situation and dreams of the future. More importantly, it gives us an insight into the mindset of that person who is sitting on the hottest chair of the world as of now. The language is simple and easy to understand, and what makes it interesting is the author’s vivid description of his experiences while election campaigns, of being a senator of the opposition party, of being an African American amongst the predominantly white populace.
After outlining the theme and the writing style, we may write about the plot of the story and major characters if it is a fictional work. Otherwise, we can write something about the organization of the book. Like the Audacity of Hope is organized in 9 chapters ranging from republicans vs. democrats, the American constitution, their value system, religion, racism and the world beyond their borders. The final chapter is about Obama’s family, how they were his support throughout his career and how does he balance his personal and professional lives. Seems hard to believe, but even the President of USA has one.
Having so written about the book’s organization, we are now left with the conclusion of our review - and that is the tricky part. In the conclusion, you have to give your opinion about it without enforcing it on the reader. In this case I would write something like - all in all, The Audacity of hope is a good read for people who are interested in world politics and current affairs, even if they are not so much into non-fiction. But if you are looking for facts, figures or how Barack Obama reached the White House, you would be disappointed.
So, to summaries our book review process, we started off with an introduction mentioning some specialty of the book, then came the theme, writing style, plot, characters and organization. In the end we wrote the conclusion in such a way that it would help the reader decide whether the book is for him or not.
And now as the conclusion of this speech, I would like to inform you all that the Livewire team has decided to include a review section in the newsletter, wherein we request you all to write effective reviews and we are hoping to get a huge response - after all, I just dedicated my second speech to it, didn’t I? :-)
Good Afternoon friends. I am here to present my second prepared speech and the topic is "Writing Effective Reviews"
What is a review? By definition, it means a critical examination of something - now that something could be a book, a movie, a music album, a consumer product - just about anything. And by this definition, all of us are inherent reviewers. There are so many times when we give our feedback on many things for the benefit of friends and family. But there are some reviews that stay in mind and help us while deciding whether to buy or use a particular product or not - and why does this happen - due to the effectiveness of the review.
To illustrate, I would take the example of a book and try to explain how to go about writing its effective review. It’s a book that I read recently called The Audacity of Hope - the second book authored by Barack Obama, who now happens to be the President of the USA. If you noticed, I just made the introductory line of my review by mentioning the USP of the book, the name of its author. This means, your review should begin with the specialty of the book, could be its name, its storyline, plot or the fact that it has been adapted into a successful movie or that it was on the bestseller list for so many weeks.
Next comes the theme of the book along with its writing style, and how it is different from other books of the same genre. The Audacity of Hope is basically about politics - about the world in general and US in particular. It gives us a glimpse of the history of American politics, its current situation and dreams of the future. More importantly, it gives us an insight into the mindset of that person who is sitting on the hottest chair of the world as of now. The language is simple and easy to understand, and what makes it interesting is the author’s vivid description of his experiences while election campaigns, of being a senator of the opposition party, of being an African American amongst the predominantly white populace.
After outlining the theme and the writing style, we may write about the plot of the story and major characters if it is a fictional work. Otherwise, we can write something about the organization of the book. Like the Audacity of Hope is organized in 9 chapters ranging from republicans vs. democrats, the American constitution, their value system, religion, racism and the world beyond their borders. The final chapter is about Obama’s family, how they were his support throughout his career and how does he balance his personal and professional lives. Seems hard to believe, but even the President of USA has one.
Having so written about the book’s organization, we are now left with the conclusion of our review - and that is the tricky part. In the conclusion, you have to give your opinion about it without enforcing it on the reader. In this case I would write something like - all in all, The Audacity of hope is a good read for people who are interested in world politics and current affairs, even if they are not so much into non-fiction. But if you are looking for facts, figures or how Barack Obama reached the White House, you would be disappointed.
So, to summaries our book review process, we started off with an introduction mentioning some specialty of the book, then came the theme, writing style, plot, characters and organization. In the end we wrote the conclusion in such a way that it would help the reader decide whether the book is for him or not.
And now as the conclusion of this speech, I would like to inform you all that the Livewire team has decided to include a review section in the newsletter, wherein we request you all to write effective reviews and we are hoping to get a huge response - after all, I just dedicated my second speech to it, didn’t I? :-)
This speech took 7 minutes, body language was good, but rate of speech was again high and stresses and pauses were not effective. The topic was appreciated.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are welcome! But only those i like would get posted after moderation :)