Self-Evaluation Assignment #1

            My personality type is fairly averse to extemporaneous speaking, so naturally most of my concern comes from the impromptu side of the public speaking spectrum. While I do believe that I did a good job (“good” being a relative term considering the introductory level of this class), I see much room for improvement.

            I feel as though I definitely achieved the purpose of my speech. I remembered my main points, remembered the anecdotes I wanted to share, and introduced my “consequentialist” approach to solving the Rubik’s Cube in the way I had visualized in the pre-planning stages of the speech. My confidence was notably higher than in the previous two speeches, which made the extemporaneous aspect of the speech much easier and more organic. I didn’t feel as though the audience was judging me, but that they were genuinely interested in what I had to say.

            As far as improvement goes, I think there is a lot of room. The content of my speech, I felt, was great. I tried to keep it interesting and felt I succeeded in that. Ideally, I think my goal for content in the next speech would be to integrate more research-based elements into it. The delivery could have been better. Sometimes I stumbled, sometimes I lost my train of thought, and the timing of it all could have been improved substantially. It’s where I lost point for restating main points – timing. So, I think that would be my number one goal for delivery: to time it all better. Overall, if I could go back and change some things about my speech, I think I would have been more deliberate in my stating of main points. I understand the importance – to give the audience an outline that they can follow and understand in chunks – but I fell a little short in that sense. I prepared adequately, I felt. I didn’t want to memorize the speech, but at the same time I didn’t want it to seem so impromptu that it came across as unorganized, so I felt my level of preparation was good. As I said before, I needed to verbally cite my sources for the research involved in my speech. That one was an honest mistake – I never read the part of the instructions that said that they had to be communicated verbally in addition to the written citations. Reading the instructions, I suppose, would be another point to stress improvement in.

            Considering my delivery, I think the introduction could have been better. But that’s also the pinnacle of my anxiety when it comes to public speaking – the introduction. It’s a matter of gaining more confidence and feeling less shy around my audience. A lack of confidence comes across in a variety of ways. For me, there are two points that go along with that idea, which could have improved my speech. My eye contact, for example, wasn’t as great as some of the speakers I saw go up. Some people were able to start speaking without looking at a single notecard. That’s ideally where I would want to be, but that’s going to take some training. I still rely on flashcards when I’m in a pinch, so if I were to scale my eye contact from 1-10 (10 being the best it could be), I would rate myself at a 7. I didn’t just stare at my cards the whole time, but I also didn’t have the ability to do what those other speakers did. The second part that goes along with confidence was the interjection words I used periodically. I said “um” more than I should have. After saying it enough, people start noticing and I think it could have been a bit distracting after awhile.