Persuasive Speech Reaction.

First and foremost, YIPEE! Persuasive speech is over! But, I must admit I’m pretty happy with how mine went.

I feel like I’ve made several improvements on myself and on my own speaking style, but there are still some things I think I need to work on.

First of all, although it’s still not perfect, my stance has gotten a lot better. My feet were planted and I did a bit less of a “hula” than I did on all the last speeches. I still rock back and forth a bit as I stand there, but it didn’t seem nearly as bad as it was in the first speech!

Also, I still need to work on my vocal pauses! I feel like that was a pretty big issue for me. I have a tendency to lose my train of thought and it happened a few times here. I’ll be looking at my note card and I’ll have a few things written as a cue but when I go to actually say it, I have no idea what the words I wrote were supposed to mean! I think with this, my only chance at helping this is to practice, practice, and practice! I’m really happy I didn’t say too many “umms.” I had a few when I was practicing with my roommates and it just makes it seems sloppy, so I’m glad I cut that out.

But on to the good stuff! There is some stuff I did well.  I think my tone was really clear and my volume was great. From what I could tell, it didn’t seem like any one would have a hard time hearing me. I also managed to control my hand movements. I didn’t want to seem like a crazy person flailing around, so I tried really hard to control it!

In terms of was I successful as a persuader. I honestly don’t know. I had it pretty easy, because based off of the audience analysis surveys most of the people that answered my questions were for the death penalty.  But I hope that for the people who answered against, I at least provided them with some insight and some ideas so that they can research more on their own!

Overall, I’m really happy with how my speech turned out! And if I have to rate myself again, I would give myself probably around 8.5 out of 10. I think in order to get myself to that 10 I’m just going to have to practice more and begin working on my topic earlier!

I know I’ve improved as a speaker and I do feel a lot more confident speaking in front of people. And honestly it can only go up from here right?

Introduction Speech Reaction.

Before I dig down into my self-critique, how about we get a collective PHEW! Our first speech is over!

So on to the nitty-gritty.

After watching myself on video, (which is incredibly odd I must admit) I noticed that there are a few things I did decently well on, but there is also some stuff I need to improve on.

First of all, the one thing I’ve always known I do. I tend to gesticulate a lot when I’m speaking! It’s a subconscious habit, that no matter how much I try to change it its still there. I’ve never noticed how bad can get until now however. I watched my video once with a very low volume in order to focus on what I was doing and at some points in my speech it looked a bit like I was flailing about.
Another thing that added to my flailing was the fact that I was not standing strong. I was standing with one foot propped out so when I would move, I looked like I was doing an odd sort of dance.

Secondly, the one thing that I noticed was rather distracting was the fact that I had the image of the Elliot Minor CD on the screen the whole time I was speaking. After watching my video back I realized I should have at least waited to turn it on until I mentioned it in my introduction. Throughout my speech I kept looking back at the picture. Even as I was speaking I noticed I kept looking at it, in my head I kept saying Stop turning! Look at the audience. But I think it was kind of like a comfort and looking at it made me feel safe. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but it’s the truth. However I can see how if I was an audience member it would have been very distracting, especially because the album art is rather intriguing. (At least in my opinion…)

The last few things I noticed were small things but should still be noted. I was a bit nervous so I did speed up as I was talking, in fact when I was practicing with my roommate it was about 3 minutes 20 seconds. When I got up in front of the class it ended up around 2 minutes 30 seconds. That’s almost an entire minute of speaking! I also noticed that my nerves made me cut out a few thoughts from my speech and I was fidgeting with my note cards. Lastly, the rate at which I was speaking made the majority of the structure go out the window. In the second half of my speech, where I was talking about Elliot Minor USA, I seemed almost over rehearsed; it felt like I was watching a sales pitch, and not a very good sales pitch.

All in all, I would say my speech went okay. All the things I mentioned can be worked on and improved! If I were to rate my speech I would probably give myself 7 out of 10. But hey, it can only get better from here right?  =D

What did you all think