For my civic artifact speech, I thought I definitely did a solid job as I evaluated my performance. I really tried to emphasize on consistently fluctuating the tone of voice to match the significance of what I was presenting about. Using hand gestures was another thing I believe I did well, and I’ve always been the type of person to articulate well through complementary hand movements. I also heavily focused on trying to slow down my pace and instill some pauses in my speech. While I was crunched on meeting the 5-minute threshold, I do believe I did a better job of not having my brain work faster than my mouth which is something I have commonly done in speeches in the past. I think the speech had an overall engaging tone/delivery which is exactly what I was shooting for.

In terms of areas of improvement, I think quieting my head/eye movement can be beneficial to me in the future. Unlike others who may have had their notes on a split-screen, I had printed notes on a piece of paper and could visibly be seen referring down to them a few times. I know the speech did not have to be fully memorized, but I wish I maybe found a little less apparent of a way to make sure I hit every point that I wanted to. Although I focused on taking some pauses during my presentation, I do think adding a few more would not hurt at all. I was in a bit of a time crunch to fit everything in so that was not ideal to maximize the amount of times I implemented pauses into my delivery. Some of my peers do a really great job with their vocal tone fluctuation and while I think I did a serviceable job with this, I picked up some things from other individuals that I think I can implement in future public speaking opportunities.

For a peer I wanted to shout out, I really loved James’s delivery on his speech. He creates a particularly engaging tone that keeps the audience locked in on the entire presentation. He makes it feel more like a conversation, and that is exactly a perspective I want to think about when focusing on my speech delivery in the future. I noticed apparently how much stronger his speech was based on how well he delivered it – really emphasizing the major rhetorical points he analyzed through the forcefulness of his delivery.