I presented my persuasive speech on TLC Animal Shelter.
Before presenting, I felt much more confident than I did in the last two speeches. Having the experience of already presenting two speeches and listening to many others' speeches definitely helped my confidence level. It is getting easier to get in front of a group of people and talk. Thankfully, I think these skills will carryover into my future career as a teacher, where I will need to get up in front of a classroom and talk many times every day. Now that I'm realizing it only gets easier, its certainly helping to reaffirm my decision to become a teacher. Thats one thing I didn't expect to get out of this class- but was hoping for. I'm really glad to know that I will be leaving this class with an increased confidence in public speaking. Of course, I still faced the night before nervousness- which I used as energy to just keep practicing.
During the speech, I realized that this confidence seemed to be carrying over. My voice sounded less shaky, and I was fidgeting less with my notecards. Although I stumbled over a few words, I was able to recover from it. It did make my speech a bit choppy with regards to the transitions, but I'm just happy I didn't freeze and lose my overall message! I also think that my enthusiasm for the topic carried over. Some members of the audience seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, and it was easier to emphasize the points needing emphasis (ie, "Donate! Volunteer!") since it was genuine feeling and not forced. This also helped my delivery.
After the speech, I felt confident in my presentation and relieved that I had done it. A combination of practice and past experience paid off, and I felt that I had done a good job with overall content and delivery. Unfortunately, this didn't carryover with my grade, but I was still happy with my presentation, and I plan on using the criticisms constructively towards my next and final speech.
To prepare, I first assembled the general outline of the basic topics I wanted to cover in my speech. Then, I researched animal control websites, the humane societies, and the ASPCA in addition to my organization's website to get a more well-rounded view of the information. I used these sources to formulate clearer ideas, and I then assembled the full-sentence outline. I practiced using this for a while, just to gain confidence in my delivery without worrying about remembering it all. Then, I cut that down to bullet points and my sources for the notecards. I tried practicing with these for a few days, but kept drawing blanks, forgetting where I was at, and just losing the flow of the speech. I remade my notecards with more information, and everything worked out well with practice. With a future speech, I would like to better use my notecards to have the right balance of enough information to get through the speech, without having too much that I need to rely on. The next speech, however, is a manuscript, so I will apply that to my next public speaking occasion. I will continue to practice as much as possible in front of people. It helps both my preparation and my delivery. This worked well for me on the last speech, and even better this time as I did it more- possibly too much, if you ask my family and boyfriend! They might not want to hear about TLC for a while after hearing it for about a week! :) Within the speech, I cited all four of my sources fully.
