This speech went a lot better than last time! My grade was actually exactly the same, but as far as how I felt while doing the speech, I felt a lot more comfortable than I have every other time. Prior to this experience, I have spoken so fast and the every time I would finish a speech I wouldn’t even remember what had happened or if I even presented! The whole thing would just be a blur. That being said, I could have presented the topic I chose without any preparation. I already had all the knowledge about it, I just had to outline it and find references. Speaking of references, I mentioned my references orally this time, which I completely forgot to do during the demonstrative speech. That was a huge improvement and also a big reason why I lost a lot of points on the last speech we did. It is very easy to get so wrapped up in all the nerves of presenting that you end up forgetting to cite my sources orally. A big difference in this speech as well was the PowerPoint, of course! The next time we use a PowerPoint as a visual resource, I need to remember to actually change the slides accordingly! After my speech got going, I actually forgot it was there, as I think a lot of us did as well. I needed to be more aware of it and incorporate it into my presentation cohesively.

            Unfortunately, I made very little eye contact through my speech, which I could feel myself doing as I was presenting but it was all happening too fast to rectify at the time. However, I am confident I can fix this in the next speech. Overall, I would give myself a 7. Although I think the only thing I messed up was the lack of eye contact, that is a big deal when you’re trying to communicate with people and present a speech!

            The biggest strength of my speech was the content, because I was knowledgeable about the topic and I tried to present it in the most interesting way as possible. In addition, even though my slideshow was simple, I think this was to my benefit because I wanted the audience to be able to focus on what I was saying, not what they were seeing. The biggest weaknesses were, again, the lack of eye contact and probably my projection. I do not know for sure, but I do not think I really projected to the audience, or sounded confident. I would like to work on that for next time as well. I think sounding confident is important.

            Overall, the speech went well. There is always room for improvement, but for me, my biggest accomplishment was that fact that I didn’t feel like I was having a mental breakdown during me speech! Even though this didn’t change my grade, for me it means the class is already accomplishing so much of what I wanted it to. Feeling confident(or at least not feeling like you’re going to pass out from nerves) is really important when giving a speech and I’m on my way there!

When developing media for a speech, the speaker's responsibility is always to not plagiarize! The speaker must know that just because you change a photo, video or audio file a little bit here and there, that that does not mean the work now belongs to you. The owner of the original material still must get credit for their work, as they were the one who originally created it and made it possible for you to even have something to edit. In the past, many singers have gotten sued for having songs that sound similar to other artists songs. Just because the singer has taken the music and made the song their own does not mean that they do not need permissions from whoever originally made the song. The point is, unless you made it completely from scratch, it does not really belong to you even if you have altered it heavily. Citing your work and citing your sources is really important in order to avoid academic dishonesty or even legal troubles for once you're out in the real world.

The most recent example I can think of that someone used presentation media was orientation for a new job. The speaker who was leading the orientation used PowerPoint slides. She used them mostly effectively, except for she had a few technological issues and could not get the remote to work when she was trying to move back to a previous slide. That part was the only distracting part to the presentation. Other than that, she used the PowerPoint very effectively in my opinion. Odds are, she had probably given the same presentation dozens of time to other new hires, so she did a really good job of making the presentation flow nicely. The media added to the speech by providing a visual to all the points she was trying to get across. It was mostly just reiterating what she was saying, but it's a lot easier to take it all in when you can see it and listen to it. Bulleted points can really help get across all of the things from a presentation you're supposed to be taking in and retaining, so that you don't hold on to useless information while forgetting the main points of the speech entirely!

introduction and conclusion

The whole purpose of an introduction is to state the purpose of a speech. Also included in the introduction is a good hook to get the audience interested, a statement to establish credibility and the main points of the speech. The main point of the conclusion is to review all the points you have made and also to provide closure. For my informative speech about octopuses, I could start out with some kind of interesting fact about them that may grab the attention of the audience. This would be the attention getter. As opposed to a fact, you could also use some kind of quote or interesting statement to get the attention of your audience and ensure they are interested in your speech. An example of an interesting fact I could say about my topic is "Did you know octopuses have three hearts and are the smartest invertebrates?" overall this videos and reading provided a good review d the importance of a conclusion and introduction.

speech buddy videos

this weeks speech buddy videos, we learned a lot of review material on introductions and conclusions. The most valuable thing I learned was how important a good conclusion is, even if the audience is not convinced by your speech. I feel like an overall theme of this is is that the quality of a speech should be good even if the audience will not agree with your point of view. Another thing I thought was valuable, especially for our speeches coming up, was watching the videos of informative speeches, like the one about techno. For me, it is always helpful to see someone do the kind of speech that I am supposed to be doing because it gives me a better idea of my objectives and how I can execute them properly. This will really help me with my speech preparation. The other videos going into extreme detail about conclusions and introductions will be very helpful for me as well as I start to develop those parts of my speech.