I think some of my strengths as a speaker are speaking clearly and speaking at a good volume. I really wanted to concentrate on slowing down and making sure everything that I said was clear and understandable. Also, I focused on speaking with a good tone and at a good volume. Some people that I hear speak too loud and with a whinny or really low pitched voice and that make it very hard to concentrate on what they are saying. I feel that speaking clearly and speaking at a good volume are two of the most important things when speaking. If you speak clearly and at a good volume it really helps the audience focus on your words and helps them fully understand what message you are trying to get across.
Overall I think our team did very well with presenting. We really took into consideration the audience in which we were speaking. We wanted to make sure that the player we chose to “interview” was very well known, and the questions we asked would be something that everyone would want to know about. I think our speech flowed very well too. When looking at our questions we wanted to make sure that each question somewhat followed the question that came before. I think by doing that, the “interview” felt more real and less like a speech. My teammates definitely helped me in presenting better. When I present by myself, I get more nervous and I really don’t have anything to fall back on if I start slipping up. With a group I can really just relax and lean on them a little for some help if I need it.
My biggest problem in my opinion is I say “um” a lot. When I was preparing for this speech I wanted to make a point of not saying “um” so much. However, I think I got caught up in trying to not rush what I was saying and by doing that I felt my words weren’t flowing as well, so just as a reflex I starting saying “um”.
I feel that they only area our team could have improved upon is the preparation of the answers to the questions we asked. We didn’t really have any set responses for any of the questions. We went in there basically knowing all the questions we were going to asked and just assumed that we would be able to answer them fully without preparing anything. I feel that if we would have prepared a little more on what we were going to say for each question we could have answered the questions more fully and we wouldn’t have gone a little short on time.
My overall experience with this speech was very positive. I feel that it was much smoother then my last speech and was much more entertaining. In my last speech I was pretty nervous going into it, mainly because it was my first speech, but I was much more comfortable in front of the class this time and I felt that it went much better.