I was never the talkative type nor was I was never a social butterfly. Most importantly, I was not a public speaker. Since I could remember I also despised talking in front of people. I don’t know what it is that makes hate public speaking so much, perhaps it is my shy nature or my awkwardness in social scenes. Whatever it was, I am glad that I took a Speech class during my time at GCC. Seeing how much I progressed from my first day in your class made me realize that public speaking is no more difficult than proving the linear independence of a set of vectors; that’s supposed to be an easy task. Of course, I will admit that transition from my initial state of mind to the point that I am now did take some getting used to. The first step in this transition was the first speech. The informational speech was the one I dreaded the most. Waiting for my turn to arrive felt like waiting to for my own funeral to start. Once I got up there, however, it felt easier than I initially anticipated. Having practiced the night before, I felt confident in what I was going to do and say. I rehearsed my speech multiple times, memorizing it to the letter and repeating the same motions. Looking back at the film, I saw that I was struggling to organize my thoughts and say them in a cohesive way. Furthermore, I notice that my hands were visibly shaking when screwing in the screw. Lastly, I caught myself saying informal words such as, “like”, “umm”, and “yeah, so”. I attribute my first mistake to
Being a socialize person, I have always believed that public speaking is not a problem for me at all. However, I realize I was completely wrong as I had to deliver a lot of speeches in front of class, which was a quite a struggle for me. Even though my English accent has gotten a lot better throughout the year, yet it would always get terrible during my speech as I was mispronouncing words constantly. Fortunately, I have came to realize that my accent would not be so bad if I memorize the speech instead of reading it out loud like how I usually would.
For as long as I can recall, I have been the "quiet kid" in nearly all of my classes. My soft-spoken and introverted nature are to thank for this. Sure, these traits of mine make social interactions- a vital aspect of society- more difficult for me; a sigh of relief and a mild sense of accomplishment always follow a successful conversation. However, through my interests and hobbies, I have discovered a form of communication far more powerful and universal than words will ever be to me.
3) Explain the meaning of the principle of parallelism in outlining. Give an example of parallel construction.
The third chapter of a Pocket Guide to Public Speaking is about anxiety in relations to
I have never been the best at public speaking, especially in a classroom. The addition of knowing that my overall grade depends on those speeches makes me even more anxious. Even though I have been forced to do it for many years now with presentations and speeches, I have always felt that way. I speak at public events here and there, and yes I am nervous at first, but it goes away and then I’m pretty comfortable. Being in this speech class has helped me quite a bit, but I still have areas I need to improve on. I, as in myself, my classmates, and my instructor has seen these mistakes and it is my responsibility to receive and use this knowledge. I am writing this essay based on the helpful criticism I received, and how I plan to use it.
Public speaking can be very stressful, regardless of the many techniques out there to assist in calming your nerves. I think that every “first time” is a failure to me. If I’m starting a new class, leading a certain briefing, or addressing new people, I will always walk away with the feeling I could have done better. However, with that way of thinking I feel like it has pushed me to do better and I still use this to continue to show improvement. The first briefing I did as a young soldier to my superior command was almost too overwhelming. I found that after a few minutes it immediately got easier. I now use this experience to assist myself in current situations. I can become very nervous due to the fact that I’m competitive in everything
What did I do to prepare my informative speech? I spent a lot more time on this speech than my last one. I practice maybe like 5 times because I wanted to know that what I had written down was the correct way to inform my peers. I had to spend more time on this because it was about something I like and I really wanted to inform my peers about a part of my life. How did I feel when I was up in front of my peers? I felt fine, a lot better than my last speech, I think it was because I practiced more, and going up there it doesn’t matter if people are or aren’t interested in what you are talking about. After the first speech it made the next one more comfortable for me because the same people that watched me the first time watched me again and I felt more confident in what I was going to say.
I did mine as a congratulations and a welcoming speech to an NFL player who was being inducted into the Hall Of Fame. I was able to eliminate most, if not all of my verbal fillers because I had prompt that I was following right in front of me. Even though I could look at the paper, I was still able to keep eye contact with my audience, engaging them in it with me. However, I did not show the emotion that was necessary for a speech such as this. There are different scenarios where different emotions are necessary when it comes to speaking in front of an audience. I personally need to be able to identify those different scenarios and ensure that my emotions come through rather than being flat and
It is more frequent to have a genuine fear of standing and talking in front of a large group of fellow classmates than any other fear or phobia. When in realistic terms, it is more likely one will have to speak in front of students in a classroom than to be attacked by a shark on a Tuesday. Recently, schools have abandoned mandating speech classes, even though it would be easier to fund a speech class than a shark wrestling class. Public speaking does in fact create cases with reference to high anxiety and stress with percentages spanning from seventy-five percent in 2008 to eighty percent in 2015 for young people beginning at the age of fifteen. For adults, however, between the ages of 18 and 54 there is a 61.9 percent difference. Though most
In the eighth grade, one of my previous English teachers approached me and asked if I wanted to join a public speaking team. Trying to be polite, I agreed. In the back of my mind, I thought joining the team would be a complete waste of time. I had no self-confidence after feeling like I was not normal for so many years. In the same year, I started speaking competitively. When I started placing at competitions, I started to realize that perfection did not equal achievement. For once, I was being myself and I achieving something. Writing speeches, I was not perfect one hundred percent of the time. However, I still learned and I felt that I had actually accomplished something. This was the first time I remember accomplishing something without trying to be just like everyone else.
This informational speech, in contrast with my shield speech, was a nightmare. It is exponentially harder to give a speech about a specific topic than one about yourself. That’s another area where I went wrong. The first one went so well, mostly because on the off chance that I would forget anything, I couldn’t just pull something else magically from the back of my head. Nothing was waiting, because I only researched what was absolutely necessary. Even then, the information wasn’t hammered into my mind with the same concreteness as the shield speech was. When I got up there, I felt fine. Then I made a mistake.
I could have done a cheesy speech that I knew I could have done just fine, but I didn’t want to do another family, friends, hobbies speech. Usually, I’m a great speech giver because I know that I know what I’m doing, but this speech was different. I had never experienced anything like it before. When I got up to the front I started to freak out. I was sweating up a storm, and continued to do so for the next few periods, and I started to freak out. My entire speech, the one that I had practically memorized, flew out the window, and I had no idea what I was going to say. I started to rush dramatically, and even started stuttering over my words. I’ve never stuttered over my words in my life. I was absolutely terrified up there, and I knew that it was going awful. I’ve never experienced that while giving a speech, so I hope to remedy that next time. There are lots of times in the real world were you will have to, in some way or another, give a type of speech to let others know about you. When you meet new people the first few words out of your mouth are going to leave an impression. Even if it’s not a planned speech, it’s going to tell them a lot about who you are. You have to learn to present
I thought this class would be easier than it ended up being. You warned us of this on the first day of class, and you were certainly right. Fortunately, this resulted in me actually improving my public speaking skills, which I will certainly need as I go through my career. Most of the public speaking I’d done before this class involved one-on-one, pitch style speaking. This one done at robotics competitions trying to present our project to judges. While this was certainly useful experience, it was very on the fly. It did not prepare me for this class I well as I thought it would. The class succeeded at its goal of making me improve my public speaking skills, and this improvement happened in three main areas; my engagement with the audience, my anxiety, and my understanding of an outline. Given these improvements, I feel much better prepared to handle public speaking experiences I will have in the future.
In my senior year of high school, I was given a throw away assignment something the teachers used to fill the time. My English teacher Mrs.Woods had every student pick one song and describe examples of rhyme, simile and metaphor used. It was a simple assignment something a fifth grader could do with ease. The only problem for me was that we had to do it in front of the entire class. At the time I was by no means shy, I considered myself a master of small talk (whop dee doo), easily able to strike up conversation with any of my peers. So you would think that public speaking would come just as naturally. I thought so, I really hadn’t experience the fear beforehand. So when it was my turn to present my ingenious findings on the use of figurative language use in Elton Johns “Candle in the wind” I was confident. I stood up from my seat smiling, walked up to the chalk board in my blue baggy jeans and XL t-shirt and opened my mouth only to find the sound of silence. What just happened? My throat tensed up, my mouth was suddenly dry and my body was unstable. I
The kind of determination I demonstrated routinely, though valuable, was useless in correcting my poor public speaking skills. I had a penchant for gritting my teeth, putting my head down and doing the difficult, yet routine, tasks. However, up until now, I had rarely practiced stepping outside of my comfort zone. Considering this, the keys to