Audience Involvement

Despite the volume of ink spilled over the ending of Mark, thus far no investigation has focused on the variety of emotional responses that the jarring conclusion would have aroused among audiences. This article attends to emotional responses evoked by the narrative as a natural extension of the recent focus on the gospel as “heard” (communally) rather than “read” (privately). After demonstrating the inherent heterogeneity of ancient audiences, I draw upon cognitive science to discuss different ways audience members become emotionally involved in a narrative. I then present what I believe are the most plausible emotional responses to the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark. As we will see, the intersection of ancient theories of emotions and modern theories of cognition yield valuable insights for an audience-oriented reading of Mark’s ending.

Watching student speeches can be exhausting for both EFL students and teachers, if speeches are not properly set up with audience goals and tasks to keep students engaged. In this paper I present a way to engage a classroom audience and create student confidence, the Audience Involvement Approach to Teaching Public Speaking (Maher, 2015). Through this approach, students become more participatory and involved in the speech-giving process. The approach includes, first, modeling and videos on how to give proper oral presentations. During the speeches, audience members are given a role with specific tasks. Examples of roles include uh-oh expert, eye contact guru, and facial expressions observer. As students focus on the modeling and then give impromptu presentations focusing on minor tasks, they become involved and engaged in the speech-giving process, as well as improve their techniques for giving oral presentations. 聞き手としての目標や課題が的確にセットアップされていない場合、 クラスメートや生徒の演説への興味がなくなったり、内 容に集中できなくなることは時々ある。本論文は上手な聞き方の練習を通じて、生徒がより積極的なプレゼンの聞き手、発表 者になる方法を説明する。本論文はAudience Involvement Approach to Teaching Public Speaking（Maher, 2015)と名 付けられた新しい方法を中心に、聞き手の立場から始め、演説のスキルを高めるアプローチである。たとえば、生徒がプレゼ ンのお手本を見る時に「Uh-oh専門家」、 「アイコンタクトの第一人者」、 「表情のオブザーバー」、 等のタスクや役割が与えられ る。 他人の演説に反応を示し、興味を持ち、 目を止める事で自分のプレゼンテーションのテクニックが磨かれる事に繋がる。 T he purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a method of involving the audience, increasing their confidence and giving them a reason to be involved in watching their peers give oral presentations or student speeches. The inspiration for this method came from teaching public speaking and observing the boredom of other students when watching their peers present. Over time, I developed classroom techniques to interest the audience and implemented them into the semester coursework. Much of this was immediately transferable to other classroom situations that had an oral presentation or public speaking component. I taught public speaking predominately at the university level in three countries—Japan, South Korea, and China. In all situations, the university courses were for one semester, and regardless whether the public speaking component was only a small component of the overall course or continued over an entire semester, these skills could be effectively taught in a very short time period. In fact, I condensed teaching the skills involved in the method into one week, so as to get some written feedback about this method from students.