Alice Goffman's Speech Analysis

The speech I will be critiquing is called how we are priming some kids to go to college and others to go to prison. The speech was filmed March 2015 and posted on Ted Talks on May 15, 2015. Alice Goffman an urban sociologist who spent six years in a troubled Philadelphia neighborhood delivered the speech. Her background says that she sheds light on the justice system that creates suspects rather than citizens. Her introduction instantly grabbed my attention because of the subject and I related to what she first spoke about. She started of by talking about the two different institutions young adults go to. She mentioned college first and the excitement of going to college and being in college which was what I related too.. Then she went on to talk about the other institution young adults go to which is prison. The mood turned from excitement to disappointment very quickly. It was interesting to hear all she had to say about the prison as
I say it was effective because personally it opened my eyes to something I hadn’t really thought much about. What she wants are more young adults to become leaders and help this cause. Now I am not saying I will be a leader in this but now I am more aware of the fact that in some ways we are preparing some of our young adults to go to prison. I also say it was effective because the response from the audience was positive. Towards the end of her speech they clapped for her a few different things she said in at the end she got a standing ovation. If there is one thing I learned about being a better speaker from this speech is that connecting to the audience is a priority. I wouldn’t say that Alice is a great speaker because like mentioned before her voice was shaking at times; she wasn’t so interactive with audience, etc. What she did do is that from the very beginning she connected to audience. She connected because you could tell she cared and was interested in what she was speaking