MY BEST ADVICE:

The best advice I have given to someone so far is to Cassidy to work on her voice projection. I could tell during her previous speeches, she had a nice flow to them, but she was very quiet. I remember talking to her about this after her speech and she thanked me for doing so. It turns out she has been wanting to improve on this. I reminded her of this before each of her speeches.

WHY IT’S MY BEST ADVICE:

The reason why I feel that this was my best piece of advice is because it ended up leading to her over all success. I even did this in previous years, as every time I had to present, I would get anxious and my voice would get soft. While watching all of her speeches being given in this class, I could tell that throughout the speech, she would get quieter. I wrote this piece of advice down with the intent that she would understand why I wrote this. I have seen major improvement the more speeches we have and hope to see even more in the future.

BEST ADVICE FROM MY PEERS:

The best advice that I have ever gotten from a peer is to stay more relaxed and to move around more. Before this class, every time I get a speech I would tend to stand behind a podium of some sort and express my whole speech in one location. From this class, I have learned that it is better to move around because it keeps the audience engaged and can even help them understand what I say. I was told this in many feed back letters and by Cassidy in our speech 2 podcast.

WHY IT’S THEIR BEST ADVICE:

The reason why it’s their best advice is because I have never thought about doing this before. I was given this piece of advice after the first speech, and I started incorporating it into my practicing for the following speeches. I would talk, whether it was to no one or in front of my peers, and would try to move around and use my hands when I spoke. It ended up working to my benefit because I have improved since the last two speeches and I feel more comfortable presenting in front of an audience. I feel that the encouragement to get better was able to boost my self confidence because I knew someone was believing in me and wanted me to progress.

BIG REFLECTIVE MOMENTS:

From Speech 1: I know that when it comes to engaging with the audience, that needs to be improved. I mostly memorized what I needed to say and did not use as much expression during the speech which is something I know I need to work on. I can do so by talking with more people and trying to add in body movements as I speak. I also could improve on slowing down when I speak. When I have to give a speech, I tend to speak fast to get it done with, but if I practice taking my time and making sure I do not stumble on words, people will be able to understand and connect to the speech much more.  

From Speech 2: Aspects that I thought went well included using eye contact, using hand motions, and volume. While I presented, I wanted to make sure that I would not look at my outline, so I could focus more on the audience. Also, while presenting, I wanted to use hand motions more, because in my first speech, and even a little in my dry runs, I did not use hand motions. I felt that I connected more with the audience by doing so. Plus, in my first speech, I had a quiet voice, so when it came to this speech, I made sure I projected my voice louder.

WHY THESE REFLECTIVE MOMENTS MATTER:

These are big reflective moments in two ways. The first reason that I feel this way is because I showed improvement from one speech to the other. From speech 1, everything that I said I wanted to work on turned into everything I felt went well in my second speech. This was something that I was proud to achieve because I put in the effort and it showed. The second reason that I feel that these are two prominent reflections because for both of them, I added in how I going to work on improving and how I did work on improving. I feel this was important to add to the reflections because it shows that I took the time to think about how I wanted to get better and the steps that it takes, rather than just saying I need to work on certain aspects then never doing so. This has helped me throughout the rest of the semester as I have given more speeches. I am more prepared and feel more confident in myself.

MY BIGGEST STRIDES:


The speech that I felt had the most growth between dry run and final is speech 4. The reason I feel this way is because for the dry run, we were still trying to work on if we wanted to change anything in our speech and for the final, we were able to work out all the revisions. We felt that our characters and information worked for our talk show, but the biggest shift we worked on the most was altering the final organization of the speech. We were able to organize it in a way that we felt most people would understand and were able to do so by meeting regularly outside of class and working on it, giving each other feedback on how we wanted it to go. We ended up pulling it all together in a style we liked and felt like we were successful in the process.