An Effective Speaker Paper Comparison Critique of 2 Famous Speeches - Essay Example

Steve is the most appropriate speaker for the Stanford audience, because of his experience in the technology field, for which the university is renowned. In the course of delivering his speech, Steve Jobs adopts a conversational approach. This is particularly evident when he reminisces about how he founded Apple, Inc with his co-founder, Steve Wozniak. Instead of referring to his partner with his full name he states “Woz and I started Apple.” This statement evokes a mental picture of two close allies and it is a good choice of words.

This is especially because the audience comprises of graduates, who often perceive the ceremony to be a point in time when close friends diverge perhaps never to meet again. Steve also utilizes a simple and customary delivery approach. This is evident throughout the fourteen and a half minutes long speech. For instance, he summarizes his entire speech using four simple phrases; first he states that he will narrate three stories to the audience. He then outlines the three narrative topics as “a story about connecting dots” (0.23), “a story about love and loss” (5.32) and finally “a story about death” (14.33). .

This serves to ensure that the audience gets sufficient time to assimilate the information. For instance, at the end of his first story about backward connection of dots, Steve poses for about six seconds when he says “even when it leads you off the well-worn path… and that will make all the difference” (5.18). The pause is intended to ensure that the audience acknowledges the importance of exploration and persistence. Steve’s relatively casual opening, his conversational delivery approach, simplicity and use of pauses in the course of the address, are all attributes that make his speech effective.

These are all features that resonate with the principally young audience. They are also attributes that enable him to effectively convey his primary lessons on mortality, the importance of individuals loving their work and the essence of courage in following one’s intuition. However, the speech is not without few flaws. The first and most notable flaw is that, Steve constantly reads from his transcript and hardly maintains eye contact with his audience. This denies him the chance to fully connect with the listeners as shown by their occasional disinterest.

The other outstanding fault is the speaker’s partial fail at comedic delivery. For instance, when Steve states that “I didn’t even know what a pancreas was” (10:07), he delivers the line in passing and does not even pause to relieve the audience’s tension. Another example is when he says “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there” (11:40). However, the partially failed attempt at humor could be attributable to the speaker’s effort to imitate academic oration; to evoke empathy from listeners, or to emphasize the magnitude of