Thursday, October 9, 2014

Informative Speech Reflection

When I was thinking of topics for my speech the 2014 World Cup was the first thing that came to my mind because it was something that happened recently and that everyone was aware about. Since I'm from Brazil and spent all of my summer there, I was well aware of the details of the topic and I first handily saw how the event impacted the country not only when it happened but also during the prior preparation years as well. Therefore I had the idea of talking about the political, economic and social impact of the event on Brazil. Since it happened not long ago, it was hard to find scholar articles about the post-impacts of the event on the country so this was one of the problems I encountered. My scholar articles were mostly about the expectations people had of the world cup on Brazil so I had to rely on newspaper articles for the actual impacts and stuff. But, since I was there and I'm from there it was easy to narrow down what was good or bad information. I feel like my attention grabber of talking about how everyone was into the world cup during summer was good because I gave a situation that people related to.

I feel like my speech was very organized because since the beginning I informed my audience that I was going to talk about the three types of impacts the event had on Brazil: the economic, social and political impact. But, I could've given more information to the audience about each one of those things in the beginning of the speech to show my audience what to expect throughout my presentation. I was scared of running out of time so I rushed through my introduction and forgot to mention not only that but also the importance of me witnessing the government's priorities shifting to building infrastructure for the event. Towards the end of the presentation when I saw I was running out of time, I also rushed through my last third point and skipped some sub-points so I could get to my conclusion. Even though my presentation was organized I should've organized my time better to make sure I didn't leave anything out.

Since I was nervous I ended up speaking faster than I did when I was practicing. I also forgot to pause where I wanted to which might have made my speech look rushed. I feel like I could've also had more eye contact with all my audience instead of just fixing on the middle of the class. That probably happened since I was nervous with the time constraint and also wanted to say everything I had to. It was also hard to narrow down such a big subject like this one to three main points and a 7 minute speech since I had to make sure I wasn't making it to simple also.

Overall, it really helped to calm my nerves that I knew my subject well and cared about it a lot since it impacts my home country. Thinking positively about my prospects as a public presenter also helped me to feel confident about the presentation and that I didn't have to memorize the information but instead internalize it. I think I gave a good speech and it was good practice and I know that next time I will think about all these points and improve as a public speaker.

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