Self-Evaluation 3

I think that in my persuasive speech, I got my point across. I stumbled a bit and rushed it, but I think the material I had helped me prove my point. It was kind of awkward giving my speech when there was on my one person to present to. It was hard to make eye contact with only one person and it was hard to make it a presentation, rather than just talking to someone one on one. I feel like I would have done better if there were other people in class because I was uncomfortable with only one person. It was hard to make it formal when I was only presenting to one person, so I felt like I was talking to them instead of presenting. I was confident with my material and I knew what I wanted to say, it was just awkward pretending to have an audience; it felt like a practice speech. If I had to do it over again, I definitely would not stumble and rush it as much as I did. My speech ended up being short because I skipped over some things that I wanted to say and forgot the others. I felt like my delivery wasn’t that great, but I had good content and organization. I felt like organization was my strongest point because everything led from one thing to another. I started with stating the problem, then giving a possible solution, and then showing how this affects people. I feel like at I had a lot of supporting material, because in the end I gave many statistics that related to my subject and ended it with my strongest one. I think the biggest difference was how comfortable I was with the subject. I feel like I was less comfortable about this topic because I wasn’t as passionate about it as my informative speech. Also, I needed a lot of research with my persuasive speech, as compared to my informative speech which I already knew a lot about the subject. I think the only thing distracting about this speech was the fact that there was no audience. I think it made it more difficult to just present to jus tone person, as compared to a crowd. I think I would give my eye contact a 9 because I knew my speech well and I did look up a lot, I just didn’t have anyone to look at. I think I would give myself a B because my speech was shorter than usual and I did stumble more than usual. I think I at least deserve a B because I had good eye contact, I was loud, and I had really good content and knew my topic. I don’t think this speech was as good as my informative speech because I don’t feel it was as strong. I know I got my point across, but I still don’t feel I was as confident or passionate about it as I was my informative speech. In my informative speech, I was very passionate about educating people about my culture, and although I was passionate about my persuasive topic, I wasn’t as excited for it. I mentioned four sources in my speech at the end when I gave statistics. Out of the demonstration speech, informative, and persuasive speeches, I feel like my informative speech was my strongest. In my demonstration speech, I was still getting use to public speaking and stumbled a lot and even during my persuasive speech, I stumbled. But I feel like my informative speech was almost flawless because I was so confident and educated about my topic, that it was easy to inform people about it.

What concept or concepts from the class that you thought was the most helpful in preparing your speeches?

I think the most helpful concept from this course was how to make effective media for a presentation. I learned tricks on how to make my power points effective, and learned that I was doing a lot of things wrong in my presentation. For example, I didn’t know that color schemes really mattered when using a power point and that you should barely use any writing. I found it a lot more effective to use only a sentence or two in each slide and to use bold to emphasize my main points. This makes it more clear to the audience the point I’m trying to get across. Also, I learned not to put too much on a slide because this can distract the audience from my speaking.

Which speech was your favorite and why?

My favorite speech was the informative speech. This was my favorite speech because I feel that I was most confident with this speech and I really enjoyed informing people about my topic. Persian New Year is something that’s very important to me and it was easy to inform others about it. I felt like it was the best speech I gave and I feel that the audience understood what I was trying to inform them about. Also, it was easy for me to give a speech about Persian New Year because even without looking at the slides because even if I forgot my lines, I knew the topic well and could easily make up for it.

What are you going to take from this class that you think will be helpful in future endeavors?

I think that the speech tips will be very helpful in future endeavors such as company speeches. Persuasive speaking was a very important topic that will be very useful later in life. I think everything we learned will be helpful when speaking to other people and trying to prove a point and being persuasive. It’s important to know how be professional and how to present yourself when giving a persuasive speech. When working for a company and you are trying to pitch an idea, you need to know how to go about presenting yourself. I think the class helped a lot with that. I think that knowing how to make a slide show and presentation media is also important. I learned how to make slides effective and presentable. I also learned that I shouldn’t crowd my slides with words but to show more pictures and use italicizes to make my words more dramatic and emphasized.