Self Evaluation Assignment #2

Another speech has past us by. I told myself this time around, I was going to nail it and give it all I got. I had practiced and read my material and told myself, what could go wrong? Many things actually, and things I wish I had done differently. This time around, I learned once again what could be done better in this speech and in the next one I’d be responsible for. My speech was on violence and video games. I was to explain its purpose on how it affects young children, studies that had been done, and also about the violent media.
Going into this speech, I had a lot of expectations for myself. I knew I’d be way more confident being in front of my classmates and my anxiety would no longer be there. Going up in front of everyone felt good and I knew my information. I believe that I did get to people when explaining how bad video games can be to young children as well as adults. Video games now are getting more amazing with graphics that they’re incorporating more violence and sexually explicit content in them and young teens and as well as people my age are thriving to purchase. I felt very very comfortable and confident. My only downfall was that the same week we had our speeches; I fell sick Sunday and was sick the whole week with a bad stuffy nose and sore throat. I tried my best to make it through the week and I’m proud that I did!
I know everyone has a little regret when looking back at the work they’ve done or performed. For myself, if I could go back and do it over again, I would first and foremost try and not be sick, because that really took me back a little with performing my speech the best I could, and I would concentrate more on my audience then my note cards. I was concentrating on my note cards more because with this speech, I had a lot of resources to tell the class and that’s why I had brought more note cards with me this time around because I could not memorize all of my resources. One goal I would have to improve the content of my next speech is to provide more input from myself rather than rely on my resources and what other people have said about it. One goal I have by improving the delivery in my next speech is to show more enthusiasm to the class to show that I’m having fun delivering my speech and that I do know my stuff!
With this speech and my last, there were many things that were different. For my first speech, I was more prepared and knew my information better than this one. With my second speech, I kept relying on my note cards because being sick, you lose a lot of focus and you’re tired and I just basically tried my best in delivering my speech that day. What was good with my second speech, I felt that the class enjoyed it more than I thought they hadn’t. What was bad for me was that I could feel that they knew I was relying on my note cards too much.
I’m all about distractions. I think the only distraction was looking at my note cards more than the audience. This wasn’t an improvement from my last speech because I remember from my last speech I didn’t look at my note cards as much as I did this time around. My eye contact this time around would be a five. I would grade myself with a B- because I know that I could’ve delivered this speech way better than I should have. I didn’t take the time to practice and getting sick wasn’t planned. The note cards being used frequently are a big disappointment for me. I used plenty of source citations this time around and I’m happy I didn’t leave them out this time around. I mentioned about six source citations throughout my speech. I would say, I was more happy with my last speech but this speech was better because I lost my anxiety and shyness level went away.