The first Communications class I took was definitely helpful in developing my speech. While attending Northland Community Technical College (NCTC) I took a Communication public speaking class. Our teacher was pretty flexible on what he let us do our speeches on. Our instructor wanted us to speak about what we were truly interested in while attending his class. Thus I gave a speech about my recently acquired Nintendo Wii, because I was excited to play video games on it and explain the cool new technologies to my classmates. My instructor also had every person in the class give a speech on one of their favorite songs by reciting the lyrics. My song was the 2-Pac version of Changes.
My public speaking class wasn't the only one that has helped me in the speech communities area; I have done group presentations with my peers in classes like Interpersonal Comm., Intercultural Comm., Television Production and I'll be giving a presentation in my Advertising class sometime this semester. The largest impact on my communication speech abilities was most likely due to my internship/practicum at the UND TV. news station Studio One. I was a News reporter and a production assistant for Studio One. Interviewing people on camera and editing it for the news program every Thursday definitely helped me develop speech and public relations.
Attempting to learn a new language can also impact a persons speech. I have taken Spanish in Junior High and High School, so I thought Why not take it at UND too? Even Spanish 101 is extremely difficult at the college level, especially when you try to cram a semesters worth of Spanish class into a five week summer course. My instructor was from Ecuador, thus a lot of his pronunciations and word usage were way different than what I learned from my previous Caucasian American teachers. One example is that he doesn't roll his R's and he was the first Spanish teacher I've had who explained the the Spanish V makes needs to sound like a B. My next goal is to learn Mandarin, because my older sister can speak it fluently.
While taking Communication and society our Instructor let us pick a service project to do. As a class we chose to help out in the Northlands Rescue Mission. We had a great experience in developing our speaking skills while conversing with those less fortunate who live at the mission. We helped out with an evening meal, re-decorated and re-furnished a bedroom, and spruced up their basement barber shop which included adding the mirror that they had gone without.
When I worked for Amazon I helped customers navigate the Target web site so they could purchase items online. This job experience greatly helped develop my communication speech skills as well and I was amazed at the vulgar things people will say on the phone when they are frustrated and angry. I definitely found out that people from every part of the country can be nice or obscene. The weirdest part of that job was connecting people to other service personnel who could help them in other areas. The other service people always had to speak a certain way that made them sound very polite and helpful.
Over all I have had a great and interesting experience developing my speech community skills. This semester I'm finishing up with all the Communication classes I need, but I still have some more generals to take next semester before graduation.