Progress Made

I can't believe we finally completed our last speech. This semester went by extremely fast, but I can say that I learned a lot about public speaking and now feel very comfortable standing in front of a group of people and speaking to them about topics that are dear to my heart.

For my last speech, I decided to speak about dogs. I am a big animal lover and thought my passion would show when I delivered my speech. To make it meaningful to my audience, I spoke about the health problems that many purebred dogs go through. Although I had to conduct a lot of research, I truly enjoyed doing it. I organized my time very efficiently that way the day before the speech, all I would need to do was practice delivering it. I believe this helped me immensely because by the time I had to deliver my speech, I was so familiar with the information and the authors that I felt like I just had to speak to my peers about what I learned. I had no difficulty memorizing which authors conducted which research. When I deliver my next presentation, I will make sure to organize my time as I did with my final speech that way it comes off natural. I was certainly nervous in the beginning, but I do feel I made progress feeling confident in front of the class.

I am very content with the delivery of my speech. However, I have reflected upon things that I could have done better. I thought my visual aid was excellent. I really liked the graphics, but I wonder if they were distracting to my audience. I had A LOT of graphics, so I hope they were not overwhelming to my peers. Likewise, I wish I would have engaged with the slides more. For one of the slides, I had to explain how the dog was domesticated. Although the information made sense to me, I wish I would have broken it down more so that it was more comprehensive to my peers. I am also not sure, if my explanation of genetics made sense. Perhaps I should have narrowed down the content that I delivered.

Overall, I am happy about my final speech and I hope my classmates learned more about purebred dogs and the factors they should take in consideration when they adopt their next dog. Thinking about my first speech and my last one, I believe I have made progress. I can't wait to see how I rise up to my next speech outside of COMM 204.