Critique of a Home Depot lawn and garden management speech

Speaker Critique

On Friday 6/15 I went to home depot to see a speech on "How to Manage You Lawn and Garden." I had seen a flyer in the store on a previous visit and decided that this would be an interesting event to attend so that I could learn how to take care of my yard at home. This was a free event that just required showing up at the specified time. I was hoping to pick up some tips on how to better care for my flowers and grass as I always seem to have hard time making it look good all summer long.

Evaluation of Speaker

The speaker was a representative from expertvillage.com. He had been invited to speak to the audience in regards to how to manage ones yard and garden. His motivation for giving this speak came from his intense passion for sharing with others his knowledge about how to manage ones lawn and garden so that they always look good. He appeared to be very passionate about wanting to spread his knowledge to others. The speaker appeared to know what he was talking about and had a lot of very useful hints and tips to share with his audience. These tips and trick were not necessarily common knowledge but were very interesting to the audience.

The speaker had pretty good delivery skills. This was not a speech that was done extemporarily, as he had planned topics on which he spoke with props that he used in order to better show what he was talking about. His vocal delivery at times was somewhat shaky as he sometimes stumbled over his words. His physical delivery, on the other had, was very good in that he moved around enough to keep the audience awake and alert. The speaker appeared to be very confident in what he was presenting and a somewhat corny sense of humor. He managed to get a few chuckles from the audience which showed that people were paying attention. Overall he was a very interesting speaker who tried hard to keep the audiences attention by providing very interesting and useful information.

Description and Analysis of the Speech Content

The speech was very informative as the speaker talked about several topics having to do with lawn and garden care. He broke each topic down into steps and included listing the tools that would be needed to complete the particular project of which he was speaking. The overall speech was broken down into subtopics. At the beginning of each subtopic the speaker outlined what he was going to be talking about and how that particular project would benefit the audience in the end. The speaker did a good job at going through each project step-by-step and providing tips and helpful hints along the way. The speech had a topical pattern structure in that the main topic was about how to manage ones lawn and garden and each subtopic covered had to do with a specific project on how to accomplish the overall goal. This structure was very useful in breaking down a very big topic into smaller parts that could be tackled and accomplished in order to achieve the overall goal.

One of the best parts of the speech was the props that were used throughout it. Not only did the speaker talk about how to accomplish the different projects, but he demonstrated the tools that one would need in order to carry out the tasks. This gave the audience a very good idea on what they needed and what they should look for when they went shopping to get the supplies that they would need for their particular project.

Analysis of the Audience

The audience consisted mostly of middle aged men although there were some couples in attendance as well. Everyone who was there was interested in finding out how to take care of their lawns and gardens. In general the audience appeared to connect with the speaker as they asked a lot of questions along the way. Those with specific questions were looking for some good advice on what they could do to deal with whatever issue they were having. The audience appeared to be very interested in what the speaker had to say and was very grateful for the information that they received during this program. I got a lot of good tips and information from this speech that I was able to take home and use.

Overall Reaction

Overall I thought this was a very good use of an afternoon. I learned a lot of things that I didn't know before I attended and came away with some really good ideas for things that I can do in the future. Overall the speaker was very interesting and entertaining. It is nice to see someone who has a passion about something willing to share what he knows with others so that they can benefit in the end. This is an event that I would recommend that everyone who has a yard attend so that hey can get the tips and tricks to use for themselves.