After reviewing my videos over the past few months, I can be confident that my public speaking has gotten much stronger. The only flaw I have for my persuasive speech was that it sounded more like an informative speech, but overall my speech performance was alot stronger than when i initially came into the class. I have learned to keep a strong posture, use efficient hand gestures, and to keep a confident, strong voice to get my point across to the audience. In the beginning of the semester i struggled to keep a strong stance, i would constantly move around and I have trouble addressing all of the audience. However, now i have corrected these issues! I can definitely use this public speaking experience for my advantage in my future especially since my major is finance. It will be extremely useful in business meetings to get my point across to my other coworkers. The class was a great experience and I have taken alot from it!

While reflecting on my group for the informative speech regarding immigration and the tenement museum, I believe we did a pretty well job at delivering a solid, unified presentation that properly introduced the topic and informed the listeners. As I reviewed our recorded video, I believe our group as a whole could of improved our presentation by providing more smooth and strong transitions to go from one topic to the next. Other than that I felt like we did a good job. The only slight issue I saw was that from time to time, some of us had a tendency to look at our flashcards to gather any more information we wanted to tell the listeners. This causes the presentation to seem less professional and it distances the listeners to the presenters. There was also some swaying in our stances when we presented which we should learn to eliminate for future speeches. However, we all had great, supporting information to tell to the listener. We properly backed up our facts with images on the presentation to give the listeners a sense of perception of the time-period.  If I could of changed something now that I had seen our presentation, I would of removed some text from the PowerPoint and incorporated more images. I feel like images are a lot more interesting to the audience now. My own personal delivery I found to be strong and at a good volume. However I would like to get out of the habit of swaying during the presentation for my future speeches. I would also like to improve on giving presentations without the dependence of the flashcards at certain times, which will make the speech look more serious and professional. I believe that everyone did a great job on the presentations, everyone had their own way of getting the audience involved and interested through the use of questions, videos, music, and images. I personally found that the use of music during one presentation was unique and definitely made me more intrigued to listen.

Maurice Studer

I personally found that the personal speech was easier to do than the monologue. I find it very useful to have personal flash cards in front of you in order to help yourself remember all the main point you want to address during the speech. In this aspect, you can write down key ideas on the flash cards that will help you transition to the next idea during the speech. However this can be a disadvantage as well. I noticed, while watching my own personal speech video, that I sometimes overused the flashcards to my advantage. For example, my eye contact would be constantly glancing at the flash cards in my hands. In my next speech, it’s essential that I use more eye contact with the audience, as well as having a looser posture. In the video it seemed as if I was stuck in one position, so next time, I would like to see myself move around more, with the use of more hand gestures as well. I am overall happy with my loud tone of voice during the speech, but at some points my voice was trembling. This diminishes my convincing arguments if I do not have a confident voice. Therefore, I need to work on improving my confidence level during speeches. I noticed that a lot of my fellow students used questions in order to grasp the listener’s attention and get them intrigued to listen on. This is a very efficient way to begin a speech strongly. However some things that does not help contribute positively to a speech are vocal filler such as “um” or “like”, as well as speaking in a too fast manner. These things cause the listener to not want to listen on.  Lastly the image below that I have included shows that it is essential to get over any stage fright fears and to present your speech in a confident and professional manner. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni0YLzQqHPc

As you may know, the news was recently consumed with the shocking release video on the confession of Matthew Cordle, a 22 year old man, who struck and killed Vincent Canzani while drunk driving on June 22nd 2013. During his 3 ½ minute long confession video, Matthew conveyed a powerful and influential message on accepting consequences based upon your actions. Within his video, Matthew did the unexpected. He directly confessed to killing a 61 year old man while being under the heavy influence of alcohol. He did not attempt to bring up excuses for his deadly actions on that tragic night; he simply openly stated that he is guilty and that he will take full responsibility for what he had done and the justice that will come. Initially, Matthew starts the video with his face blurred and his voice disguised. His intention was to show to the public that he had the opportunity to do the cowardly thing; simply lie and avoid any responsibility for the death of Vincent Canzani. However, he did not choice this path. Instead, roughly half way through the video, Matthew’s face finally becomes un-blurred, revealing the true person that was accountable for the fatal accident. With the conclusion of the video, Matthew begged whomever that is watching the video to not make the same mistakes that he made. Even though it was too late to take back his careless actions, it is not too late for another individual to evade a tragic incident that can be easily avoided.

-Maurice Studer