After completing the Unit One speech assignment, there are some comments/reflections that I can make on the performance of my speech based on my own thoughts, my peers’ feedback, and my observations from other speeches.

First, for my own thoughts on how the speech went, I thought that the assignment sounded more overwhelming than it actually was. After reading various Keywords that gave insight into how to prepare for a speech, I thought that the concepts (i.e. pacing, volume/tone, hand gestures, etc.) were easily attainable. Specifically, I focused on trying to include purposeful silent pauses, proper pacing, and body language into my speech, which I hope showed to the audience. One aspect of the speech that I think was made more difficult over Voice Thread was maintaining eye contact. I feel as if when I give a speech in person I am less inclined to look at my notes because I am talking to people, rather than when I am recording a speech I feel as if I get anxiety out of awkwardness so I look at my notes more. Even though in most cases this is the other way around, this is definitely an area I would like to work on for next assignment being that we have to give a TED Talk over Voice Thread.

Moving on, I only had one person comment on my speech so I am going to use her evaluation to make my own conclusions, but I also recognize with more feedback the level of evaluation could change. Based on her comments, it seems as if my pacing was at a good speed which is something that I strived to work on. She also thought that the one image that I provided for my artifact was perfect, and not too overwhelming to my speech but rather enhancing. Another comment that she made, which helped me feel reassured in my analysis, was that she could follow all of the points I was making and follow along with the analysis I was providing. This was a positive note that I think helped me understand that I did a good job, since when I was giving the speech it of course made sense to me being the writer/speaker but I was questioning whether my points were clear or not.

Lastly, after viewing other speeches, one of the major differences I noticed between my speech and others was that I only provided one image to support my speech where others had almost a slideshow of images or clips from a commercial. While I think in the cases of most of these other speeches that this action was completely necessary and enhancing, I believe for mine just one was the right move. This allowed me to give time for the audience to look at the artifact, but also have the time to go into a deeper analysis (i.e. visual rhetoric/appeal) rather than try to get through every component of say a commercial as an artifact. In the future, if I have a different artifact, I would definitely consider using multiple media points to enhance my presentation.