Evaluation

I was surprisingly impressed with my performance as far as our speeches went. I fully intended to do a terrible job(unintentionally, I just did not have very high hopes for the experience) but after we were through and the anxiety was gone I felt like everything went much more smoothly than I anticipated. .I think I got the whole point of my speech across very clearly, and I also felt much more confident than I had felt during our last speech.
In retrospect, I do wish I had practiced orally citing my sources a little more, because when it came down to it I just presented my topic instead of remembering to mention what my sources were. I will work to avoid this in future speeches. I would also like to work on my nerves, as I distract myself with my own hands shaking so much. In my next speech I think I will try to make more eye contact with the audience. To improve the content in any speech, the best thing to do is more research. The more informed a person is about their topic, the better and more fluid the speech will be.
Like I mentioned, I am not sure if the audience noticed, but my hands were shaking a lot through the duration of my speech. I would like to rectify that in the future. I felt like the more my hands would shake the more nervous I would start making myself. I would also like to try to eliminate the use of 'umm' and 'uhhhh'. This will be my main goal in my next speech. Even if the content of the speech is good, the presentation must also be good and done with confidence for the audience to respond well!
 As I also mentioned earlier, my source citations were not what they should have been. I unfortunately only mentioned one source during my entire speech.. I got too nervous and anxious about my speech and had a momentary lapse of proper brain function. My eye contact could definitely be improved upon. For this speech specifically, I feel like this was a bit of a difficult subject to judge because some people, the actual demonstration of what they were teaching would get in the way. For me, I know I was looking at my demonstration way more than I was connecting with and focusing on the audience, which is what I should have been doing during my speech. The only part of my speech that should have been performed better was the oral citation. I do wish I had cited all of my sources.  The fact that the rest of is went so fluidly made me only wish that the rest of it would go as smoothly as the start of it did. Overall I earned a grade of a 'B' which was what I got. I did a reasonably good job but there was still a lot of room to improve for next time, and I plan to do just that.
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audience analysis

I found the part in the book about audience analysis particularly interesting because I had never even thought about it as a crucial part in preparing for a speech. I now know that it is so important to know who you're speaking to before hand, as it enables you to prepare a speech that is best suited to them. It can be really important to know how formal or casual a speech needs to be, and also where the speech is being presented and why. Knowing all these things ensure that the presenter can have the best speech possible. Unfortunately, an awesome speech can be prepared but if you do not prepare it with your audience in mind it might not be received very well. Speaking of the audience receiving your speech well, it is also important to gauge your audiences reaction to your speech as you are presenting it. If they look confused or bored you can use that information to change the direction of your speech and enhance it. 

speech buddy videos

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Research interviews

Although I haven't done any research interviews in recent days, I did do a few in high school for journalism purposes. The best way to interview someone properly and effectively is to have good interview questions. The kind of questions you choose can either elicit really interesting responses from the person being interviewed, or they could leave you with a one word answer that you might not even be able to use for anything. Other than having good questions, it is important and helpful to be conversational when interviewing people. If the whole interview is just the interviewer asking the question and getting just the answer specifically, it may appear more awkward than they'd like. To avoid this, it can be helpful to treat the interview as a conversation that just happens to have required questions thrown in the middle. This method could yield good material when the interviewer least expects it!

Speech buddy video

After watching the speech buddy videos, I benefited greatly from Jessica's anxiety reduction techniques. I always thought the only required pre-speech preparation was to memorize the material being presented, but these techniques to reduce anxiety seem very helpful. Thinking positive thoughts about what you are going to present can be very helpful. By thinking positive thoughts and visualizing the speech going well you can minimize the chances of messing up based on psyching yourself out and creating unnecessary anxiety. You can also practice breathing techniques to ease your anxiety when you give your speech. The tension-release breathing seems like it would be most beneficial in my opinion. I feel like it would be a good strategy to try for when I give my speech on this upcoming Thursday!

Apprehension about public speaking

The strange thing about my relationship with public speaking is that I only started getting nervous and apprehensive about it roughly a year ago. In these recent days when I speak publicly, my face gets really hot and I speak way too fast. Afterwords, I cannot recall what I actually said in my presentation and I am not able to remember if I said any of the things I intended to. In regards to what I read in the chapter, I think a big cause of my anxiety is the high level of uncertainty I have about the audience's response. It's tricky to speak in front of people who may be bored by your speaking, uninterested in the content, or in disagreement with your point of view. I feel like this public speaking course will help me become more comfortable and more skilled in public speaking and perhaps these nervous tendencies will subside.