Speech Self-critique

We Are!

Sound familiar? In case you can’t put a name with a face and a speech, (sorry, but a lot of the blogs I read I don’t actually know who the person is… I’m working on learning names) I’m just giving you a friendly reminder. I started my speech with the We Are chant and spoke about the Look Good Feel Better program. I spoke second on Monday. Hopefully you guys enjoyed my speech and took something from it. Here were my thoughts on it…

I was definitely nervous. I’ve done a decent amount of public speaking- I spoke as well as sang/chanted a THON linedance for my entire school at a pep rally, took a semester long speech class in high school, and yet I still manage to be nervous. At least in this sense, our CDA book makes me feel normal. I guess everybody gets nervous, and it’s actually kind of a good thing. After reading that, as I marched up the stairs to 219 Thomas on Monday, I can honestly tell you that I said to myself, “Kelsey, this anxiety is good. You practiced and you know what you want to say, just use this adrenaline rush to your advantage.” Which I thought was pretty cool. Thanks Anne Francis Wysocki and Dennis A. Lynch!

As far as the actual speech goes, there are a few things I would fix if I could do it all over again. First, I would slow down a little bit. I sometimes speak too fast, and then have to slow down again when I catch myself. There were definitely times in my speech where my mouth was going a little too speedy. Also, I heard an “umm” or two escape. I guess because I was nervous I felt the need to fill the empty space. A final thing I would have liked to improve on was one of my transitions. When I went from the first, more civic part of my speech to the second, more rhetoric part of my speech, the transition was a little rough. I worked on how to fix that, but couldn’t manage to come up with anything very fluid. Hopefully it wasn’t too choppy. Not that this is all that can be improved, these were just things that I happened to notice.

A final thing I would like to say, even as advice to those of you who have to speak on Monday, is about practice. When hearing “practice between 12 and 20 times,” I was astounded. 12 and 20? Holy cow! However, I realized that I probably did practice somewhere in that range. From the very rough I-have-no-idea-what-this-is-gonna-be-like practice to the I’m-nervous-and-really-want-to-know-this-well practice right before class, you’ll be surprised by how many times you actually do run through it. And it DEFINITELY helps.

Good Luck Everybody!

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2 Responses to Speech Self-critique

  1. John Minbiole says:

    Thanks for some insightful comments about your speech and the work you put into it!

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