Presentation #3
I was very happy with our group’s presentation this time around. Our first group presentation was a disaster and we all were very disappointed with the result. This time around we promised one another we’d meet more often and practice the speech before presenting it to the class. I really liked the type of speech we chose (toast), because we were able to make it into a speech. Some of the original ideas we thought about would’ve appeared to the audience as more of a conversation, rather than an actual scripted speech.
The best part of our speech was that we all practiced and knew our individual lines. We knew what was on the outline and we basically memorized what needed to be said. This is so important becuase it keeps the audiences’ attention and makes you much more confortable as your speaking. I know that I wasn’t prepared near enough for our first group speech and it showed by the tone of my voice and my body language. I felt this speech started strong and progressed so much better thanks to practice by every member.
I was in charge of the introduction and my main goal was to get the audience to realize right away what the event was and to get them to feel as thought they were part of the event. We wanted the audience to feel like they were at the wedding in order to keep their interest. I think overall I did a pretty good job of this. I also was in charge of the closing; however, we exceeded our time limit by a few seconds and we didn’t have time for my last few lines. I believe this was the biggest problem with our speech. We practiced multiple times, but didn’t take into account dead time. It is a lot easier to practice and recite a speech in front of no audience than it is in front of one. All of us took longer than we accounted for and it ended up costing us a little bit. We also didn’t account for the time it would take each speaker to stand up and walk to the microphone/podium and I think this is a big reason why we ran out of time.
In closing, the speech went much better than I thought. I felt like we kept the audiences attention by using a mixture of seriousness and humor, and did a good job speaking on the words we had in the outline. I think the biggest room for improvement is to practice as if there is an audience, or maybe even gather up a few of our friends to create an audience and recite the speech to them. As an individual I need to work on calming my nerves before I speak, because I still felt some anxiety and nerves when I gave the introduction. If I’m having nerves with four other group members standing next to me, I’m going to be much more nervous during the next speech when I’m by myself. I plan to find ways to fix this problem over the next few days days before speech #4.