What happens when you hear or see a strong speech? What
about the opposite? How does the quality of the speech affect
feel about the message?

Your brain is responsible for nearly all functions of your body and for interpreting sensory information from the world around you.

Your brain has many parts but speech is primarily controlled by the largest part of the brain, the cerebrum.

The cerebrum can be divided into two parts, called hemispheres, which are joined by a band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum.

Your speech is typically governed by the left side of your cerebrum. In about a third of people who are left-handed, however, speech may actually be controlled by the right side.

Parts of the brain involved in speech

In recent decades, there has been an explosion of research into language processing in the brain. It’s now generally accepted that the control of speech is part of a complex network in the brain.

The formation of speech requires many different processes, from putting thoughts into words, forming a comprehensible sentence, and then actually making the mouth move to make the correct sounds.

There are several areas of the brain known to play a role in speech:

Cerebrum

Each hemisphere of the cerebrum can also be divided into regions called lobes, which include the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes.

The lobes located in the front and side of your brain, the frontal lobes and the temporal lobes, are primarily involved in speech formation and understanding.

Broca’s area

Broca’s area is located in the front part of the left hemisphere of your brain. It has an important role in turning your ideas and thoughts into actual spoken words. Broca’s area has been found to be most activeTrusted Source right before you speak.

Broca’s area also helps to pass the information to another part of your brain called the motor cortex, which controls the movements of your mouth. It’s named after French doctor, Pierre Paul Broca, who discovered the region of the brain in 1861.

Wernicke’s area

Wernicke’s area is mainly involved in the understanding and processing speech and written language. Wernicke’s area was first discovered by Karl Wernicke in 1876. It’s located in the temporal lobe, just behind your ears. The temporal lobe is also the region where sound is processed.  

Arcuate fasciculus

The arcuate fasciculus is a band of nerves that connects Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area. It helps you form words, speak clearly, and understand concepts in language form.

Cerebellum

The cerebellum is located at the back of your brain. The cerebellum is involved in coordinating voluntary muscle movements like opening and closing your mouth, moving your arms and legs, standing upright, and maintaining balance. It also controls language processing.

A review published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology suggests that the cerebellum is actually more important to language processing than previously thought.

Motor cortex

To speak clearly, you must move the muscles of your mouth, tongue, and throat. This is where the motor cortex comes into play.

Located in the frontal lobe, the motor cortex takes information from Broca’s area and tells the muscles of your face, mouth, tongue, lips, and throat how to move to form speech.

Explanation:

First, listen for the frame.  The most important moments of a speech are the opening ones.  That’s the time when the speaker should tell us what the speech is about – preferably something interesting, and preferably in an interesting way.  So listen for the frame at the beginning of a speech, because that will guide the entire rest of the occasion.

Second, listen for the emotion.  Ask yourself, what emotion (besides  a little natural stage fright at the beginning) is the speaker trying to convey?  Most speakers find their emotions attenuated by the difficulty of emoting on command in front of hundreds of people, so you may have to interpret for the speaker, or even make an educated guess.  But knowing the emotions at play in the speech will give you a road map for the important landmarks in the journey the speaker is trying to take you on.

Third, listen for the false notes.  Of course, I’d much prefer for the speaker to succeed beautifully, but it’s also the job of the audience to decide whether or not the speaker is credible, and whether or not to trust the speaker.  Sometimes that involves deciding that the speaker is not succeeding.  You need to kick the rhetorical tires, and decide for yourself whether the speaker is what he or she claims to be.

Fourth, listen for the stories.  Good stories are at the heart of a great speech, and so the audience has a right to expect those stories at regular intervals, and for the stories to carry much of the emotional freight of the speech.  Those stories should reveal personal involvement in the topic and should tell us things that we can’t learn any other way.  Beware the speaker who tells stories that are clichés, that you’ve heard many times before.  Because that usually means that he or she is letting someone else do the thinking.

Finally, listen for the ask.  At the heart of every great speech is a request, from the speaker to the audience.  Even if it’s only a minimal “believe with me that this is important,” there’s always a reason why the speaker is doing all that work.  Listen for that because to understand the ask is to understand the speech and the speaker.

And here’s one more:  listen like a child.  Children have the opposite listening ability to grownups – kids listen to the whole experience.  They have a hard time focusing.  As a result, they notice a good deal more than most adults, some of it irrelevant, but some of it not.  Spending some time listening like a child is a great way to open up your listening, refresh it, and avoid missing out on something essential.

Listening is hard work, and most people find themselves half-listening at best, because what’s going on around them competes with their inner voices, and all the other distractions of the daily to do list.  A little thought about what to listen for can help you get the most possible out of a speech – which will make the speech successful, too.

Explanation:

i agree definitely that

the words “strangest” and “unusual” suggest that the narrator is about to tell the story of an odd or puzzling group of people.