Self Evaluation

Overall, I am very proud of this speech. I believe that I achieved the goal of this speech very well. I feel that my examples and support were very strong and persuasive. Also, this feeling is backed up by the pieces of paper that the other students filled out on speech day. For the most part, my peers gave me sevens to nines, meaning that they felt my speech was pretty persuasive. However, I did receive a few lower sixes, but the majority of the slips were higher. I might have felt good about my persuasion, but I was not feeling good on speech day. I was very nervous. Mostly, this was due to the fact that I was ill prepared, again unfortunately. To be completely honest, I did most of my practicing the day of the speech. Not having practiced much, like the book says, I was very anxious and nervous. I was confident in my facts and that I knew the subject matter. My main concern was my delivery and that I make my speech coherent and sound somewhat practiced. Like the rest of my speeches, I would have practiced more and prepared myself better. Other than that I would not have changed much of anything. I liked my support and felt that was persuasive. My organization was effective so I would not have changed anything else. As far as my delivery, I would try to be more confident and take fewer pauses and know all of the information without looking at my cards.
What was different from my last speech was my confidence level. In my last speech I was much more confident and knew my subject matter much better. The last speech was my favorite and a subject that I enjoyed very much. Also, I swayed back and forth more in this speech than I did in my last speech. Other than those two things, the speeches are very similar. This swaying was one of my distracting things. I would sway back and forth and shift my weight every time I looked at my note cards. Also, my hand gestures were a little distracting. I believe I did this less in my last speech. This was probably due to the comfort level I had with the last speech. For this speech, I was more focused on getting my support in line as compared to focusing on the finer things in the last speech.
I felt that my eye contact was pretty good. I would give it a seven out of ten. It was not much different from the other speeches. I did rely on my note cards somewhat to keep myself in the right spot. I believe that I received the proper grade for my performance, which is a solid B. I did a good job on the speech but there was plenty of room for improvement such as more confidence and remembering to say all of my citations. My eye contact had some room to improve. However, it was strong overall. Even though this speech was strong I feel that the second speech, the informative speech, was better than this one. I felt more confident and knew the material much better. Also, in the last speech, I paid more attention to the smaller details which really help make a speech look and sound good. Throughout my speech, I counted four source citations. This was less than I was supposed to say, but I skipped a couple due to time issues and I just forgot to say one.
This speech was pretty good, however, the informative speech which I did on snowboarding, was my favorite and best in my opinion, by far. The informative was a topic I really enjoyed. I really took time to learn the speech instead of memorize facts. Also, the audience could really see that I had a passion for snowboarding which helped them connect with me in that speech. Also, in the informative speech, my distracting behaviors were limited compared to the others. Preparation for the informative speech also, was much better. I practiced more than the other two, as well.

Helpf for the Future

Something I will take form this class that will help me with future endeavors is that it is best to do as much prep work ahead of time. I have a procrastination problem, so I would always wait for the last minute to prepare for my speeches and it hurt my grade a little. I have learned that it really is easier to do things like assignments early, not to mention how much less stressful it is. This will help me in my future especially in college as well as in my career. If the prep work is done ahead of time, you can spend more time refining and polishing whatever you are working on.

Organizational Patterns

The concept that I found to be the most helpful in preparing for my speech was the parts about the organizational patterns. The organizational patterns were the most helpful because if you have some kind of template in mind when you are doing your research or outline, it makes it much easier to go through information. With the pattern in mind that I wanted to use, I could read a page and say this helps here and that helps there. This made outline construction easier too because you knew what you were going to talk about. With a solid outline it is easy to practice and memorize pertinent information. Also, transferring the information to note cards was easier with a well thought out outline with a good organizational pattern.

Favorite Speech

My favorite speech this semester was definitely the informative speech I gave on snowboarding. This was the most fun and interesting to me because I enjoyed the topic the most. I did not have to fore myself to do the research. It was actually kind of a problem because I would read the pages then go onto reading more as opposed to reading then doing the rest of the preparation for the speech. It is way easier to give a speech or do research on a topic which you find interesting. The other two speeches were ok but I could not get into them as much as I could with my Informational Snowboard speech.