Reflection On Final Reflection

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.

My preparation for my speech was simple. First, I used the method of cognitive restructuring, which “transforms negative self-talk into positive self-talk (Schwartzman, 2014, pg. 37). I used positive self-talk and a positive self-concept of myself to help boost my confidence for giving my speech. I also used systematic desensitization to reduce communication apprehension, which describes the feeling of anxiety about oral communication with others, according to Schwartzman (2014), to harness my nervousness and anxiety about presenting the speech in front of an audience (pg. 35). In addition to this, I rehearsed my introductory speech several times to make sure I was ready to present in front of my class and used the concept of visualization

I am glad to know that public speaking anxiety affects many others and strangely, just by thinking about others struggling with something similar, it reduces my anxiety. I plan to take each assignment from this class and learn as much as possible. Picking an interesting topic, starting research early, and good organization will help to build an effective speech and adequate practice will ensure a clear delivery. I will continue to use deep breathing and incorporate relaxation techniques to help ease the physical symptoms before a speech. Also by practicing often, the material will be familiar and my past speech experience has shown that I will be less stressed. Once again, practicing and working through slip-ups will also reduce

The informative speech that I presented on Friday, which was about how to make gingerbread cookies went better that I though. I succeed in some aspects of the speech in others not. I still have couple points that I need to improve for my next speech and I hope I do much better than I did. The aspects I effectively accomplished in my speech were; good organization, good preparation, appropriate tone of voice and good eye contacts. The weakness points that I need to improve or perfect are the anxiety that I had, the topic of my speech and my body language.

Some of my biggest flaws that I will need to improve upon is weak eye contact, having enough citations, elaborating on unfinished points and not being dependent on my notecards. I excelled in my introductory, transition and conclusion statements as well as maintaining a good presence and providing factual information. These speeches have been challenging for me as presenting is not something I look forward to doing and is something I have avoided in the past. This class has forced me to face a fear and grow as a person which I am thankful for as I hope to continue to better my presenting skills and control my anxiety while doing

My voice, that is my strongest aspect of my speeches, my voice is what gets the people to pay attention and to stay interested because if you are mumbling it gets boring, for me I talk loud so everyone stays interested in what I am talking about. Another thing is my eye contact, I know I did well on that, I used to never want to look up because speeches scared me, but now I’m fine and can look around. After I was done with my speech how did I feel? I felt good, but kind of awkward at the same time. The topic I was talking about made it kind of awkward, mostly because no one really knew what I was talking about. I felt confident after my speech because I got through it, and had a good time which I was worried about to. Everything went well and I was happy with that. I did well on really giving detail, letting everyone know what exactly sony vegas is. I need to work on maybe adding more detail, for sure not sway back and forth during my speech. I need to work on still being more prepared, maybe expand a little

The one “pattern” that I would like to change is becoming better at public speaking. I have always been bad at giving presentations or speeches, but I never made the effort to identify the problem and improve upon it. Last semester I had to give my first presentation in a college class and once again I had a complete brain freeze. Before the presentation, I kept telling myself that it’s going to be easy as long as I am not the first person to present. Everything went to my according to my plan and most of my classmates presented before me. Although most of my classmates looked nervous and anxious like me, once their turn came up to present they comfortably spoke up for the required 5 minutes. I was surprised that nobody really froze up and it gave me the confidence to go up and do the same. However once again when my turn came up to present I went completely blank. My voice was shaking and I kept repeating my words. This was another embarrassing experience for me because all of my classmates presented smoothly. I ended up only speaking for only 2 minutes instead of the required 5 minutes. This affected my grade because I only got half

Overall elements of my speech that I enjoyed were my strong facial expressions and my ability to maintain enough eye contact with the audience. Elements I could work on was not showing the audience how nervous I was going up, practice on my body language and not try to move too much when presenting. Work on my pace while I read and try not to stumble across things. To ensure improvement practice ahead of time and make sure it’s constant, not just the night before the speech, but a few days in advance or whatnot.

Public speaking is a subject most struggle with throughout their entire lives. Many think that after you learn how to public speak through presentations in middle school or high school you just get over how frightening it can be and learn to cope with the struggles of it. In many instances that is true. Depending on where, in schools students usually start public speaking while doing presentations every other week in a middle school class. Then gradually over the years you get more assignments slowly increasing the amount you public speak until you are comfortable to do it alone or for a certain period of time. For some students, like your’s truly, public speaking can be quite nerve racking. The fear of completely failing astronomically. One

After reviewing my persuasive speech, I personally believe my public speaking has improved. When watching this speech and comparing it to past ones, I noticed a great amount of improvement with my overall confidence in the way I spoke. This then made my audience actually enjoy my speaking because they too felt the energy I was giving off. All throughout the presentation, I spoke clear and for the most part without hesitation. Also, I met the visual aid requirements for this particular speech, and I believe they were introduced appropriately. Similar with my past presentations, I was focusing more on my notecards than my audience. Although, I do notice that it is still better than my first presentation of the semester. Likewise, I stumbled

This class has helped my public speaking skills in many ways. My greatest improvement overall is that I am now confident in my public speaking abilities and yes there will always be a little nervousness but no anxiety. I have become a more confident speaker compared to what I was before I took this class. Although the progress is not huge, it is progress and I am very satisfied with the progress I have made throughout this semester. I cannot wait to use the skills I have learned throughout this course in the future when I will have to speak in front of a group of

Though I still have those butterflies and sudden shaky voice when I got up in front of a group of people I feel more confident and secure with myself that I can make that time contract and that I can get through the speech proficiently without making the obvious mistakes that the audience would notice. For example, saying excuse me in the middle of a speech apparently you’re not supposed to do which makes sense due to the fact that you messed up and you’re letting the audience know that you made a mistake. Also, at the beginning, all I wanted to succeed in the class was to pass the class but further into the quarter I began to notice on how handy this class would’ve and will be in my other classes when it comes to making presentations and project speeches. From my experience in the military what I had already had practiced was to stand at attention and answer questions from the panel which was already practiced and the questions were usually already prepared for the soldier to research and use to answer to the best to their

First, to work out the jitters, I mixed new practice techniques with some of the old ones from the "how-to" presentation. My cats still played as my audience for some of the practice rounds, and I recorded my speech once into the phone to check for any confusing information. Next, I practiced and timed my speech 32

With this speech I was able to conquer many factors such as letting my words coming out in a voice tone the way I intended it to be. I was able to deliver my main points just like I practiced. I was able to create an outline according to what I expected to deliver to my audience. However, once again I allowed my nervousness to get a little bit of my power and confidence. Because of my anxiety I did not create a true connection with my listeners (classmates). I recognize that I fail in keeping a good eye contact with my classmates. Also, I have to work better with the pausing between my sentences to emphasize my points more effectively. Additionally, I failed in explaining some details to make couple of my points more clear, but inside of me I feel proud of myself for such a nice beginning. Even though I have to relax a little more, trust more in myself, and set aside all the thoughts that interfere with my success during my presentation, I am excited about this experience.

From the beginning of the past eight weeks to the end, my pubic speaking capabilities have change dramatically. In the beginning of the semester on the first day I was incredibly nervous, so when I walked up to the front of the class with my desk mate, I was shaking, sweating, and could feel my heartbeat. Extremely shy, scared of my classmates and professor judging me or thinking less of me because I could barely say one word without getting a lump in my throat. I could barely lift my eyes from my paper and gaze on the daunting eyes that were staring. Those couple minutes of our first speech talking about our desk mate felt like hours, I could not catch my breath and was ready to run out of the class. After the first day I was so mentally exhausted from being anxious and was immensely stressed that I would not do well in the class. The stress and worry was doubled when I heard about the background of our professor, since I did not want to do poorly in a professor’s class that I highly respected. Thankfully, I stuck in the course and did not run away, and with every class public speaking became easier and less taxing, especially in small groups. The practices and folders of information, aided the process and confidence when speaking. Getting to know my classmates made the course extremely fun and less stressful because I knew they were only here to help and not hurt. The student critiques gave me confidence and made my speeches higher quality and the only time the professor