Why I Hated My Speech

On Monday, I gave my special occasion speech. I would have to say that I was most nervous for this speech and really I don’t know why. The topic I believe was a little harder because you did not have as strict of an outline that you could speak on. We could really pick any topic that had to do with a special occasion. I know for me it took a lot of thinking to decide which one I wanted to do and the one I did choose still felt awkward. Having such broad speech choice also made it hard for many people in the class including me to make the time requirement. I would say that the time was my largest fault for this speech. Some of the other problems that I had during my speech was that I did not go into a great deal of detail on the husband and not going into much fun detail on anything else. I left most the speech pretty broad in the way that I only really told one story. If I were to do the speech again I would come up with much more to say about each person and why they are so perfect for each other.

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.

I had everything planned out precisely at the beginning of the week. I scheduled my audience and my location. An hour before the presentation, a number of my audience members were called away to investigate criminal cases that came up. In addition, the room that I had scheduled had to be occupied by other members of the office. Therefore, within an hour or so, I lost my venue and audience members. I scrambled to find another location and audience members. Due to these circumstances, I feel as if this speech was not my best performance. I felt rushed and lost my focus on the material that I have been working on intensely for this assignment. I do not feel as if I gave an adequate representation of the American Hero Marcus Luttrell. I could have spent hours talking about his story and his determination to survive dire

Speaking with limited time can be hard, but Matt Abraham’s speech about speaking with limited preparation, provided some great tips which I’m going to share with you today. The first tip I have to give you that if you organize before your speech and know what you are gonna talk about, the stress will be much less. The second tip is if you worry too much, you will think your speech is going to be substandard and then it will be. If you go up there with confidence and believe your speech is great, it will be great. My third and final tip is if you find a way to connect your audience, either through a joke or a physical action. It gives you confidence and helps you audience feel more comfortable around you. That is, the three tips I can give

It's something that I definitely noticed while giving the speech since I barely made the time minimum compared to when I practiced where I was at over four minutes. My introduction started off pretty solid but I fumbled a bit when I had to look at my notecard but i continued undeterred. I feel like I need some more transitions. The ones that I had were good, but there wasn't really any sort of transition from my expression of the values of the audiences to the values of my nominee. It wasn't anything major, but I was aware of it going in and so I can't not talk about it. My vocal fillers were almost nonexistent. Even when I had to look at my notecard to find my place I did not try to fill the silence with an “uh” or “um”. My volume was fine. The real glaring problem to me was that I did a sort of shuffle. I am not sure if this is because that is something that I tend to do or if it was because I was pacing while practicing my speech. I felt that my diction was appropriate for my topic and understandable. There were a few times where I instinctively combined two different phrases that I used on different attempts into one combined phrase that didn't really work out very well. An example of this is when I combined the phrase “on the earth” and “in the world” and got the phrase “on the world” and had to correct

So many things went wrong in my speech. I forgot quite a few things that I so badly wanted to say. Not any of the broad points, but rather specific sentences that I wrote in the outline. They were going to be so cool. Sadly, my preparation is where I went wrong. I went over my speech plenty of times, but I forgot to really read the outline. That repetition without looking at the details left my mind, my mouth, and as a result, my speech, bare of lots of things.

Your chest is tight and you feel like you’re on fire. Your chest is tight ant you’re burning up. The flash cards in your hands are crumpled from you squeezing them obsessively. You look up and see dozens of eyes staring at you, waiting expectantly. Taking a deep breath, you stumble through the speech. When it’s finally over, you practically run back to your seat, cheeks flaming bright red. You slump down, already dreading the next time you’ll have to deal with your upmost fear: public speaking.

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

First off, there were many strengths that I believed were demonstrated within my Values Speech such as pacing and eye contact with my fellow classmates, but despite the strengths that were seen, the weaknesses of stuttering and finishing sentences abruptly created a weak feeling at the end of my presentation. As I watched the recording of my presentation on repeat, I noticed that my pacing was very well executed. I didn’t speak too fast nor did I speak too slow, which is good because my classmates were able to follow along with what I was saying. Not only that, but I also provided eye contact to my classmates, showing that I was well prepared and did not need to read my note cards as much. Of course, with strengths, there were also weaknesses portrayed. I often stuttered at a couple of phrases because of my anxiety and I would also finish some of my sentences abruptly, leaving a poor execution. I realized that once I began saying a certain sentence and mess up mid-way through, I would end the sentence with words that wouldn’t be as clear. Now knowing my weaknesses and strengths, I will better prepare myself for my next upcoming speech by practicing my speeches with more word choices when I say it verbally, allowing myself to become more aware of the variety of

We often have the wrong purpose in mind when we are preparing a speech, or we have to many purposes that we want to present the goal of the presentation is lost. Which in return causes the audience to be confused and when the audience is confused we stress, or at least I do. One of my biggest struggles in life is the idea that everyone must like me, I am generally a nice person who likes to please people and make them happy. If someone does not like me I must know why they do not like me and if there is anyway to change the fact of their views towards me. I find it amazing that in our speech classes or any opportunity to publically speak for that matter, we are able to tell someone something so we need to make it important. We have the ability to have someone's undivided attention for a moment in time, and we should make that time be of value and truly impact an audience with our words. There is almost a hundred percent chance that someone is going to disagree agree with you because that is human nature, but just think how boring it would be if everyone had the same exact thoughts and viewpoints. Try and give your audience advice and information that is of value, and if they are unable to appreciate it then do not over think why they did not like it but instead be happy with the way that you presented it.

As I began my presentation, encouraging and confident words quickly gave way to a meager amalgamation of nervous half-speech and self-doubt. My body tensed and my legs shook as I stammered out a timid, “Thank you for coming to our Hackathon.” In truth, I don’t recall much of what I said beyond that. This was my first time presenting in front of such a large audience, and it felt like a train-wreck. Dishearteningly, it eroded the elation of any prior successes, leaving me feeling like a failure.

As I indicated earlier, I was confident before my speech and that was no different for the way I felt during my speech. This speech was a little odd for me despite the content. I didn’t have any notecards so if there was a time when I would forget a word or a line, I would have to make it up on the spot which I did several times. Furthermore, despite the number of times I have presented, I was a little nervous this time when I was speaking. This was evident by the delivery of my speech. I spoke clearly but there would be times when it didn’t flow. However, for the most part, I felt a great level of comfort. I began to look at people I feel extremely comfortable with when speaking, which

The first speech we did was the narrative speech. I was so nervous during this speech that I cannot remember anything I was doing or saying. If the room wasn’t so small I feel like my voice probably wouldn’t have projected to reach the back of the room. I’m also surprised that I was making eye contact because I really do not remember looking at the room. I’m also surprised that I seemed confident because I did not feel very confident up there. This speech was also the easiest for me in terms of content. It was an event I was there for, so I was able to recall the event and the emotions that were running through everyone.

Back on Tuesday, September 19, I (along with the rest of the class,) gave my first speech in Oral Communication Class. It was our first speech assigned/presented in class, and its topic, Self Introduction. Some people may find it challenging, but I see it as a very simple subject to talk about. Who knows more about you than yourself? No one! So why do people find it so hard to talk about? I had a funny feeling that the day the order of our speeches were assigned that I’d be the first person to give their speech. Sure enough, I was the first person to give their speech. I’m genuinely glad that I was first because I was able to “get it out of the way” and not have to stress on it. Giving a speech in front of my peers is nowhere near as nerve racking or terrifying as I thought it would be, but upon giving my speech, I would like to reflect on how I felt the day of my speech (in terms of confidence levels,) some verbal and delivery skills which I used well/not as well, some improvements that could of been put in place for my speech, and who in the class I believe gave the best speech among us all.

After a while, the guests started to show up and sit where they were told. My father took pictures of me with all the guests. Once everyone was there, people started making their speeches. At first, I was calm, but then It was my turn to make a speech. My speech talked about my "journey to adulthood" and my ideas of how to help the world once I finish my studies. I was so nervous, that during my speech my sister, who had also made a speech, had to come up twice to tell me to be louder! I was a little choked up after my parent's speech telling me how much they cared and how proud of me they were. Once I finished, the guests all applauded and I was very happy and only slightly nervous.