I was really excited about this speech. I wrote my outline like a week before I had to do it, and I was working on it little by little all of last week. By biggest problem was having TOO much information. The first time I actually gave the speech to my roommate, I was at 9 minutes and talking fast.
But after I reluctantly cut out some things, I was ready. Soooo ready. Giving my speech memorized in the shower ready.
Watching the video, my first response was, of course, to cringe. I hate watching myself on video doing anything. But of course I can't help that.
So, I still liked that I started with that video. It was so sad, and very powerful (I thought). It is such a misconception that you're only going to need an organ transplant when you're old. However, I wish I had time to make another visual aid. I feel like that would have added to my speech a lot, because there were a lot of facts and numbers and that can get boring or confusing to listen to sometimes.
Watching myself give this speech, I noticed that I moved a lot. Crossing and uncrossing my legs, moving back and forth...it was a little distracting for me. I didn't have this problem with most of my other speeches, but fr some reason I just couldn't keep one planted stance.
I started out talking really fast. Reeeeally fast. I can remember getting a little more than halfway through my speech and realizing that I was talking really fast. I slowed down at that point (or at least I think I did), but I wish I had realized this sooner. When someone knows their speech as well as I did, talking fast the way I did can make it sound rehearsed, which is not what it was supposed to be. When a speech is so rehearsed, the speaker can get off track easily and it doesn't sound as conversational (or even convincing). You could tell that I had it almost entirely memorized, because I would stop in the middle of a sentence and then look down at my card because the next word wasn't coming to my mind. :/
As much as I didn't like watching myself in my video, I still feel that I did a good job. I was much more prepared for this speech than I was for any of my others, and I chose a really good topic. Organ Donation is one that is really important to me, and there is a surprisingly small amount of people who actually know a lot about it. I also really liked the fact that there was such a large amount of discussion within the class about it! I think that means I was doing it right. :)
I thought your speech was very effective. I thought you had some very good stats. They weren't too confusing or overwhelming. I also thought you had good volume and good eye contact but you might want to work on hitting the corners more. I didn't think your speech sounded too memorized and I could tell that this topic was very important to you. Awesome job Erin!
ReplyDelete