Self Evaluation #1

Speaking in front of a crowd of more than five people has always made me nervous. In the past, I have always spoke softly in front of an audience because I was a afraid and never really was prepared for what I had to say. Even if I had practice, I would think negatively about what I had to say and about myself. But for this first speech in Public Speaking, I felt better prepared with all the advice from the blogs and from the book. It was interesting to see myself on the video. I was hesitant to watch it because I thought I did terrible. Before I pressed the play button to watch myself, I remember telling my friends and family a couple hours before that, watching the video of myself is compared to watching a horror movie because I am curious to see how thing turned out but am afraid of it all at the same time.

After watching the video I felt a little better about how everything went. Before going to the class I reminded myself that I should not think about anything but the purpose of why I was going to be there on that day and in that room; that purpose was to inform people about my topic of incense. I felt I achieved this purpose through emphasizing my main points and having visuals to enhancing the presentation. Considering past experiences, I was fairly comfortable and confident in how I delivered my speech. I did notice that my body was a bit tense even though I had a lot of hand movements.

There are a couple of things I would have done differently in the speech if I were to get the opportunity to do I again. First, for preparation I would practice seven times with full sentence outline, another seven times with keyword notecards, and give the speech to three different people to get feedback. Secondly, for delivery I would make sure I would not say “um” and “ugh” so often and try to make more eye contact with the audience. One of the goals I have for improving the content in my next speech and that is to mention my sources briefly when I give proof of something or refer to a point. Another goal I have for the next speech in delivering it is to not say “um” and “ugh” as much.

Some of the things I noticed after watching the video of my speech delivery was that I had a lot of hand movements that became a bit distracting. Also saying “um” and “ugh” repeatedly took a lot away from the information and presentation. Some of the positive things I saw were, I spoke clearly and I was able to touch on the main points. I also noticed that I did not mention any of my sources during the speech. This is something I must remember to do. Making eye contact was also an issue for me and if I were to rate myself on a scale of one to ten, I would have to give myself a 7.5 because I did look at a couple students in the audience, I hardly looked at my note cards, and had very little words to read from the Power Point to force me to look at the audience.

Overall, I enjoyed informing people about incense and I would give myself an A- especially because my purpose was to inform people about incense in a clear way and I feel I was successful in doing that because it was clear in stating them and with the critiques from the classmates, I found that they did understand the main points. Secondly, I put a lot of energy to my voice so that it would not be boring. I was very interested in my topic and I saw through the video that I was excited to tell everyone about it. Thirdly, the Power Point enhanced my presentation because it helped the audience see a visual of what I was speaking about.