Eval #2

The purpose of my speech was to explain the benefits of massage therapy. I feel that I did achieve this purpose focusing on Swedish, deep tissue, sports injury, and infant massage. I was confident in the material that I had to present and am comfortable talking in front of people in general. However, I was nervous about the time limits. I could talk about the subject matter for hours so restricting and focusing the information at hand was a challenge. Also, remembering to incorporate the cited sources into the speech made me nervous as it is not typically something that I have to take into consideration. The biggest difference I would have made in preparation is to not start writing it the weekend before it was due which would have then allowed me ample time to rehearse it.  In regards to support and organization I don’t think I would have made any changes.  As far as delivery of my speech, the only change I think I would have made would be to step away from the computer so that I could not see it to read from the slides.

To improve the content of my next speech, I will probably attempt to get more quotes and statistics to assist in relevancy.   To improve the delivery of my next speech I will make it more of a point to have more eye contact… something that I think can always be improved upon.  Having to utilize power point rather than a visual aid that was tangible made this speech less enjoyable to give and had more of a sterile feel to it.  However, the power point display did allow us to display more aspects of the speech content. Since I don’t have the video to watch I am not sure if I did anything distracting or not.  Based on other classmates’ feedback there wasn’t anything specific stated that I did.  However, on the last speech I was told that I was saying “um” a lot and that was not brought up on this one.  

From what I remember I would rate my eye contact as a 7.  I tried to make it a point but am not sure if I remained consistent in it or not.  Based on this performance I would give myself an “A” rating.  I had a strong introduction and conclusion and main points, I utilized power point slides, and only felt that I showed nervousness on occasion.  Throughout my speech, I had 4 resource cites to acknowledge but think I only mentioned 3.   I feel that I performed my last speech better than this one mainly because I was more nervous about the time restraints with this speech.  Having a tangible object to talk about also helped maintain focus and flow.  I was aware of the fact that it helped draw the audience in.  Also, not having a tangible visual aid on this speech made me a tad more self conscious.  It added more aspects that needed to be remembered such as advancing slides, making sure to look at the audience rather than the slides, and having to utilize the note cards in conjunction with the slides.