Speech 2 Outline

Title: A Proposal to change professors exam's schedules to alleviate student's stress levels
Purpose Statement: Persuade my audience that students feel an enormous amount of pressure on themselves for an exam, but if they were given more exam opportunities they would feel less stressed.
Thesis Statement: Students stress about midterm and final exams that basically determine their entire overall grade.
Introduction: 
Students are stressed about doing well on an exam because they only have a few of them in a class and they are weighted high.

• My friend is very smart, but when it comes to exams she gets very bad test anxiety and blanks on all of the information she studied so hard.
• Students look up what grade they need on a final exam to get the grade they want in a class. This puts a lot of pressure on the student.
• Midterm and final exams stress students out.

Body:
Main Point 1: Midterm and final exams stress out students, which can affect their mental health.

• Mental Health of college students
• Professors talk about it in a stressful way.

Main Point 2: Students may not be strong test takers because they get anxiety during it, but they are strong in other aspects of the class.

• Exams weighted very high
• Not a lot of other assignments in some classes
• Students blank before

Main Point 3: Solutions

• Professors give more exams frequently that are weighted less so they can have more opportunities to succeed
• Professors give more assignments
• Professors talk about it in a less intimidating way

Conclusion:
Briefly go over go over the main points in the speech and conclude with a strong statement.

Sample Proposals

Two Strengths, Two Weaknesses

Why the United States Should Adopt Nuclear Power:
Strengths:
1) Good data
2) Details support claim

Weaknesses:
1) Not specific
2) Too big of problem

A Proposal to Allow Off Campus Purchases:
Strengths:
1) Clear
2) Has solution

Weaknesses:
1) No references
2) Needs a better solution

Textbooks:
Strengths:
1) Background information
2) States problem

Weaknesses:
1) No solution
2) Not very persuasive

Rank:
Campus Purchases
Extortion
Textbooks

Speech 2 Proposal

College students have a lot of pressure put on them during the midterm and final exam seasons. A few amount of exams reflect the student's overall grade. Student's become very stressed when they have to be successful on an exam to succeed in class.

In this proposal, I will address the problem of students feeling an extreme amount of pressure on them to do well on an exam because it basically determines their entire grade. I will suggest that professors should give students exams more frequently throughout the semester. If students have exams more often they will have more of an opportunity to do well on them. Professors should also weigh assignments more equally, since some students are just not good test takers. Also, professors should make sure they are only putting material on exams that the students have learned and not try to trick them.

I have personally been affected by stressing out for a midterm or final exam that basically depends on  my entire overall grade, as well as see my friends struggle with this issue as well. This topic interests me because I believe students should have more impacted into their final grade. Students that are not good test takers are being negatively impacted by not receiving the overall grade they are striving for. 

Speech 2

We need to present a speech to our class about something that needs to be done about a specific problem that we can fix. In this speech, we will use visuals to help the class get a better idea of what we are talking about. Its should be about 5-8 minutes long.

1) Do they have to be academic references?

Peer Review Reflection

1) After reviewing Stephanie's paper, I noticed some improvements I could make on my paper as well. First, I think that I also have some run on sentences that could be more concise. I think that I try to put too much information in one sentence and it can become confusing for the reader to understand. I also need to go back and review my paper to fix these instances. I also am not sure if I cited my in-text citations completely correct, so I will need to review those as well. Stephanie's introduction was a tad bit short and my introduction may be too. In my introduction I should make sure there is a lot of good background information for the reader to learn more about the topic. I think that having two graphs in my paper is a good amount. I think Stephanie should add in at least one more graph so she has more visuals to present to her readers.

2) After reviewing Gabriel's paper. I reflected that in my paper I should be more direct to the point. Gabriel did a nice job at stating the main points and relating them to the topic directly. His graphs were also visually appealing and easy to read. I need to reflect my in-text citations and make sure they are correct as well. One improvement I suggested to Gabriel was to elaborate and explain his quotations more in depth. I could add more detail into my paper as well.

IMRaD Paper Reviews

Post your comments on my paper here please.

Introduction and Methods

Introduction

            On average, humans spend about one third of their life sleeping. This seems like a large amount of time. Sleep is a necessary activity in human life to stay healthy. Sleep affects human growth, stress hormones, immune systems, appetite, breathing, blood pressure, and cardiovascular health. Do sleep schedules affect student’s academics? Academics are extremely crucial to student’s especially in college years because this stage of their life is important in determining their future. Student’s sleep schedules may differ from the week nights versus the weekend nights. Student schedules are so packed that they may be spending their entire nights staying up doing homework or studying. Although, other activities may seem more important to students than sleep, this could reflect on their academic performance. Students’ academics involve a variety of lifestyle factors, and one of the most important ones may be getting a sufficient amount of sleep on a daily basis to succeed in classes.

            According to Hershner and Chervin (2014), “A potential obstacle to maximizing success in college is the high prevalence of daytime sleepiness, sleep deprivation, and irregular sleep schedules among college students.” Students stay up too late at night which causes them to not get a sufficient amount of sleep to be alert throughout the day and ready to learn. According to Dement (1997), “The average sleep requirement for a college student is well over eight hours, and the majority of students would fall in the range of this value plus or minus one hour.” Also, it is discussed that not getting enough sleep then puts humans in sleep debt. In order to get out of sleep debt a human needs to get extra sleep that is over the daily requirement. Students are so involved with their studies and extracurricular activities it makes it difficult to make time for extra sleep in such busy schedules.

            In another finding, it was found that sleep also correlates with alcohol consumption. It is stereotyped that all college students spend their weekends partying and drinking. College students indulge in alcoholic beverages and become intoxicated leading them into the next day with a sluggish hangover. In a study by Behav Sleep Med. (2015), “Sleep disturbance and heavy drinking may function as a negative feedback loop. Alcohol consumed 30-60 minutes before bedtime reduces sleep onset latency and consolidates sleep during the first half of the night at both high and low doses but fragments sleep during the second half, particularly at high doses.” Students may believe that they are catching up on sleep on the weekends, but they are really not receiving a healthy cycle of sleep if they are drinking alcohol before they go to sleep.

            Sleep can be difficult to prioritize in a college student’s lifestyles. Sleep schedules can differ day by day, week by week, or even month by month. Is sleep really affecting how students perform in their academics. A survey was conducted to closely examine the times students go to sleep on the week days, the week nights, if they are staying up all night to study, or even sleeping in their classes. It is more than just the aspect of sleep that is important it is when the students are sleeping that is also important.

Methods

Participants: Those who participated in this study were college students from the University of Iowa, who ranged in ages from Freshmen to Senior year. ____ students participated in this study that helped contribute to the results.

Procedure: Students were asked to complete an online survey where they were asked to complete a series of questions relating to their sleep schedules correlating with their academics. The first question was, “What time do you go to sleep on a week night?” The question provide the choices of before 9:00 am, between 10:00-11:00 pm, between 11:00-12:00 am, between 12:00- 1:00 am, and after 1:00 am. The next question was, “What time do you go to sleep on a weekend night?” The same answer choices were provided from question number one. The third question was, “How often do you do an all-nighter to study or do homework?” The answers choices provided were, almost every night, once a week, once a month, a few occasions, or never. The fourth question was, “Do you fall asleep in class?” The answer choices were always, usually, sometimes, rarely, or never. The last question was, “Do you believe you do better on an exam after getting a good night of sleep or studying all night?” The two choices to answer this question were, studying all night, or getting a good amount of sleep. These questions were asked on a website named surveymonkey.com. Bar graphs were generated to help display this data to vividly see the difference between the answers.

Data Analysis: (still waiting for some more responses on survey to complete the data analysis)