Ted Talk Reflection

I’ll admit, it was a rather unpleasant and uncomfortable experience watching my Ted Talk, especially during the times I faltered. Nonetheless, I think there are many things I can learn from my talk, which I can hopefully address in  future speeches.

1). I realized that I have a tendency to flail my hands a little too much, especially when I looked nervous or forgot what I had to say. While I think hand gestures are important, I may have diminished its effectiveness by overusing them. In the future, I think I should practice in front of a mirror or a small audience more often to overcome my uneasiness and hopefully keep  my hand gestures to a minimum.

2). My eye contact with my audience was poor, especially since I turned around multiple times to look at my visuals. I think I may not have been as familiar with my speech as I had thought. The next time I give a speech of the same nature, I think I will certainly practice more and make sure I am familiar with the order of my visuals so that I do not need to constantly turn around.

3). I am not sure if everyone observed it, but I did forget some of my speech towards the last two minutes and spoke impromptu. And while it was not as gracious and fluent as I would have liked, I am happy with what I was able to string together in a mildly cohesive manner. As a future note, I think I should learn speeches on the basis of bullet points as opposed to memorizing a three-page speech. Memory can fail all of us at times, so I now feel that “memorizing” may  not be the best way to give a speech. Instead, it may be beneficial to give a speech based off a rough outline.

4). A quirk that I realized about myself is that when I am nervous or drawing a blank, I cross my legs. It happened multiple times during the talk and while the video does not show my legs, I can see myself swaying side to side. As in my previous comments, I think one of the best solutions is repeated practice.

Overall, I think I had a decent speech, but there were certainly many things that I could improve on for the future. Hopefully as I gain more experience in public speaking and continue to critique my work, the quality and delivery of my speeches will continue to improve.

3 responses to “Ted Talk Reflection

  1. Katie Czekalski

    Watching yourself is not any fun, so honestly don’t worry about it. I think everyone could improve on eye contact, and that’s because the situation was weird with the camera. How are you supposed to talk to an audience without looking at them? But other than that, I did not notice when you blanked toward the end, so good job at speaking impromptu. Everybody has things to work on, so don’t let yours get you down. Focus on all the things you did well!

  2. I felt very similar about my speech! I could not tell that you were speaking impromptu, so kudos! That’s awesome … I know that if I had to do that, I would not have been as smooth. I agree with you that turning around to look at the PowerPoint is annoying, but considering we have not given speeches without any notes before, I think the speeches still went really well.

    I always find that writing a basic outline for speeches works better than memorizing an actual speech, so I think you hit the target!

    Have a good break! 🙂

  3. Mikaela Hermstedt

    Watching yourself is never easy! I think that the powerpoint was weird. This was the first time that I had to use something like this, maybe for you too, and it was weird to get used to. Knowing the order of your visuals might help a little bit, but I do believe the clicker and having to remember to switch it and all of that did have an impact. I can’t think of a time that we would ever have to give a formal speech standing that close to other people. If we are that close, I would think it would be more of just a conversation. For what we were given, you did a great job! There is always room for improvement, but you also have to remember all the great things you did!

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