Self Evaluation #1 World Trade Center Memorial

My first speech was about the World Trade Center Memorial. I enjoyed researching the topic and felt it was relevant to speak about especially since the eighth anniversary of the attacks had just passed. I enjoyed hearing the speeches presented by my classmates but since I had picked number twenty-one as my slot the nervousness I was feeling grew by the minute. Watching my video tape was even harder than giving my speech I think. It is not easy to look straight at yourself and evaluate the good and bad points of the speech. Overall this was a good experience and I will be highlighting more of the speech in this evaluation.
The purpose I was trying to achieve with my speech was to bring remembrance to the 9/11 attacks and highlight the memorial that is being created in hopes that some students would be inspired to research the memorial on their own or possibly visit. I believe that my “attention getting” opening allowed me to grab the audience from the beginning. As I continued on I noticed the time keepers cards at the back of the room, I couldn’t remember how many cards I was supposed to let pass before I ended, so I began to get nervous. Because of that I think the body of my speech and presentation of my slides suffered, and took attention away from the purpose of my speech but overall the speech went well. Again my nervousness had a big impact on speech day. During the delivery of the speech I kind of blanked out and forgot about my slides I knew I was speaking but wasn’t sure what I was saying. I felt confident with my material and note cards but was not comfortable being in the spotlight; I also had evaluated many of my classmates’ speeches before hand and felt nervous knowing that they were now evaluating me. Realizing now how nervous, and out of place, I felt I will visualize my next speech going well and the experience being good. Applying the concept of relabeling will allow me to look forward to my speech because it will be exciting if I just flow and let go of my emotions. I know that I had a difficult subject matter to present and I noticed that my classmates had fun with their speeches because they had chosen lighthearted subjects. My next speech is about human trafficking which is another heavy subject to present but I think it will be good. I am going to look for more detailed sources, I have already read one book pertaining to the subject of human trafficking and would like to read one more. Because my delivery was good but not excellent I decided that I will be more confident knowing that everyone is also trying to do their best, and that staying calm and positive is the best course of action. For a few days before my speech the nervousness that I references before hand was rising and I just fed into it instead of changing my attitude about my delivery. I will definitely prepare more to achieve these goals in the area of delivery.
I know I keep talking about nervousness but that is the main factor I noticed with my video. I never speak that slow even in formal settings and the swaying back and forth that I did I think was because I didn’t make good use of my hands. A lot of my classmates were very animated but I was so worried about pointing to my visual aids that I cemented my hands to my note cards, which I looked at a lot even though I hadn’t planned to. I had incorporated a lot of statistical numbers in my speech and I wasn’t confident in my memorization of them, so I kept looking at my cards to make sure that I was not citing the wrong information, but this hindered me some. I know my classmates noticed that I had been speaking for a long time and that may have become distracting to them and I could have lost some of their focus and attention. I cited two sources during my speech one from the New York Port Authority but it sounded kind of vague because I didn’t reference them as a source I just said that they were working on the memorial. I also cited “9/11 By the Numbers” which is a statistical website about the world trade center attack. Even though I mentioned two I think that technically because of the delivery I only cited one. Based on my video tape I would grade myself with a letter grade of “B”, it felt like my content and purpose was “A” material but I know that the time lapse and nervousness were a factor.
I am definitely looking ahead to my next speech and am confident that with the first speech behind me I can now look more closely at content, preparation, and delivery. This will allow me to put together a well researched speech and top it off with a smooth delivery.