Persuasive speech

For the last speech of the year I think I would give myself an eight out of ten. Personally I think I improved on a lot of the things that I wanted to fix after seeing my self introduction speech such as the hand gestures and the jumpiness. But while attempting to fix these problems I feel like another one arose, a note card reading problem. While preparing my note cards for the speech I came up with a set that had basic outlines of what the section I wanted to say, however when I practiced with these the speech didn't flow like I wanted it to. Coming up on the speech I decided to write down the entire outline on my note cards. Practicing before my speech I wanted to keep eye contact over 80% of the time. But when I actually gave the speech my eye contact seemed to significantly drop. So for next time I think it would be wise to either run it even more with the outlines of the sentences or if I choose to go the same route involving writing out the entire sentence on my note cards, work on keeping eye contact as much as possible. Other than a couple of fumbles I also think that clarity and tone went well too.

Self-Introduction Speech!

Alright, so after running through this video a couple times I could see a few things that were done well and a few things that I can (and should) improve on. I have to admit it was pretty bizarre watching myself speak, simply because watching myself deliver a speech is something I've never done before.

The most noticeable thing in my opinion was the fact that the whole speech seemed kinda jerky, by that I mean jerky eye contact and jerky speech rhythm. Sure there was movement and gesture that went along with my speech but it was something separate from conveying a message or meaning and it turned into somewhat of a distraction. So for next time: less jerky hand gestures, I'm assuming it takes a lighter touch.

Next thing I noticed about the speech was that the whole thing was relatively coherent but only just. I think that some more structure with the speech itself leaves something more to desire. While there was a lot I wanted to say about my bike I found it very difficult to cut that down to 3 minutes even though the speech itself took 2 minutes. For the next speech I think its going to be more important to focus on key topics in order to develop a more coherent speech.

And finally the last thing I feel needs to be improved for my next speech would be working on some sort of conclusion. The way I ended this speech was with the classic unprepared "And-umm-yea". Up until this part of the speech I realized as I was giving the speech that I never really figured out what I was going to say for a conclusion. So that's a must for the next speech 'develop an appropriate conclusion'

After seeing how much room for improvement there is for this speech I would rate it at around a 7-8 out of 10. Looking forward to improving on this and delivering a better speech next time!