Self Evaluation 1

      This class is definitely going to be a journey. Part of me was excited about the demonstration speech. I thought going into it that having something physical to hold in my hands and use to highlight the details of my speech would help alleviate some of the nervousness. While I practiced the verbal part of the speech a lot, I only practiced with my props twice. Overall I would say I achieved the purpose of my speech, but not to the best of my ability. As far as preparation goes I did not realize how important practicing the entire speech with props was. I used a frying pan, bread, egg and butter for my speech and I did not have them with me a lot of the times I was practicing. Next time I would just take more time at home to practice with everything. I also thought the time of the speech was 4-6 minutes. I timed myself and my speech was consistently around 5 min, so I thought I was dead on with time. I should have read the assignment again to clarify. I liked my topic, but I feel like after practicing the verbal portion of the speech so many times combined with being nervous I ended up just rattling off what I had memorized. Next time I hope I can battle my nerves more and talk about my subject naturally and with interest. That being said my content could have been more interesting, if I had been relaxed enough to just talk about the aspects that interested me. I have a lot of things I want to work on before my next speech. It was so entertaining to read the student assessments and see the things I did without even knowing it. I guess I have a postural problem, according to one person I talk with me head on my shoulder. Its so strange because in the heat of the speech moment you have no idea what nervous tics you are giving into. As much as I would hate watching it, a video would be very helpful. I thought my eye contact was pretty good, I would give it a 6. I felt I was so conscious of eye contact that I was not natural about it, and one person commented that I closed my eyes a lot. I mentioned 2 sources during my speech as far as I remember. I had a hard time feeling confident about smoothly combining the source information into my speech. I was not sure how much I needed to tell about the source, like the credentials of the person I was quoting. I would give myself a B on the speech. There is a lot I can work on for next time, and a lot that was just nervousness. This speech was by far less scary than the first, so hopefully next time I will have the opportunity to give a better speech.