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!