Self-Evaluation #2

After performing this informative speech, I feel like I am finally becoming more used to the whole idea of public speaking. I think that I achieved the purpose of my speech very well. I was aiming to inform the audience about a specific disease and I think I was able to get my points across well. I am definitely gaining confidence the more speeches that we perform, so this speech was the one I felt the most comfortable and confident with. This was the first one so far that I have not been so nervous for. If I had to do the whole speech over again, I would gather myself more during my speech. At a few different places I started to stumble over my words and I felt like I could not get myself together for a few seconds. I would also put my powerpoint presentation together a little better. It could have been more neat and I could have put more work and detail into it. My goal for improving the content of my next speech will be to find a more diverse set of resources. Many of my resources had a lot of the same information repeated. My goal for improving my delivery for the next speech would be to slow down and just pause when I start to stumble over my words. Something I did differently from my last speech was to practice more times, which made me feel much more comfortable. From what I can remember, I do not think that I did anything distracting. I made sure to pull my hair back before my speech because last time I kept pushing it back out of my face, which was probably very distracting. I think this was definitely a big improvement from my last speech. I would rate my eye contact an 8/10. I made sure to practice my speech enough times that I did not need my note cards as much as I normally do. Based on my performance, I would give myself an A because I felt that I met all of the requirements and I was able to exceed some of them. I spoke fairly extemporaneously and I also orally cited all of my resources throughout my speech. I mentioned six citations during my speech, which was definitely an improvement because in my last speech I forgot some and ended up only mentioning about half. I believe that this speech was better than my last speech because I was able to use my visual aid (my powerpoint) along with my speech very well and I think this really improved the quality. Even though I was prepared for my last speech, I think that I was much even more prepared for this one. This may have been because I was a lot more interested in my topic for this one. It is easier to remember what you were going to say next when you are not bored by your topic. Overall, I was very happy with the turnout of my speech and I was satisfied with the grade I received.