Presentation Evaluation, Speech Example

I was feeling quite confident a day before the presentation as I practiced my speech before my husband thus, it was surprising to find myself nervous at the day of the speech. I soon realized I was afraid of being judged by the audience because I know I don’t have a natural American accent. In addition, my audience was a classroom full of people instead of just a single person so it takes a greater effort to maintain your composure and exhibit confidence.

I am satisfied by my speech when it comes to speech content and clearly stating the thesis. I presented the speech content in an organized and orderly manner and my audience understood what I wanted to say. I tried to summarize my speech in the conclusion and made sure that the audience knew my position on the topic.

I believe I did better at the beginning of the speech but lost a little control afterwards. Part of an effective speech is to make sure you look at the audience from time to time. But once I attempted to look at different members of the audience, I felt that some people didn’t seem interested and that discouraged me a bit. I realize it is a responsibility of the speaker to make sure he/she keeps the audience interested but it is also difficult not to be affected by the feedback one gets through audience members’ face reactions. I do think there is a room for improvement in clarity and pitch. I thought my volume was reasonable but after seeing the video, maybe I should have spoken a little louder.

Overall, I did a much better job at the speech content than the delivery. I do need to become less conscious of my accent because that will increase my confidence. In the beginning, I got a little nervous by the audience face reactions but realized after the speech that the audience quite accommodating and friendly overall. I also need to speak clearer and with a little higher volume in the future. Video experience was totally unexpected because I noticed many things in the video I could not have realized otherwise. Some areas where I thought I did well such as speech volume and posture, the video changed my opinion. The video has also been helpful because it helped me see myself as the audience saw me on the speech day and evaluate my performance from the audience perspective. This is probably the greatest benefit of watching the video.