Good with Words: Speaking and Presenting
Working alongside Professor Patrick Barry and his research team, I have been able to identify what makes good sentences good. The motivation behind this project is to teach speaking, writing, and problem solving skills to aspiring lawyers on a large scale. Professor Barry has identified a need for improving these skills and plans to tackle this by producing professional writers and speakers through the use of his online public courses and classes through the Michigan Law School hoping to address the question of how we can improve student writing in order for them to become better advocates. As a research student on this project, some strategies I engage in to address the research question are consistently trying to test and improve them with tasks such as conducting close editing and reviewing of papers, attending the Good with Words class, taking and providing feedback on MOOC courses, etc. Personally, I started off with the Writing and Editing MOOC where I had to present feedback on what should be changed by crafting a weekly E-D-I-T memo. As a result, the critiques of the courses and classes allows Professor Barry to improve each platform. We hope to find that this enhances writers and speakers around the world. We predict that specifically improving the online MOOC courses will allow Professor Barry to scale his teaching to reach a large number of people. In broader terms, everyone who wants to become a better speaker and writer would benefit from the course.