Journal #16: Speech #4 Self-Assessment

    In my opinion, speech #4 was my most effective. I had both positives and negatives in the outcome of my speech, but overall, I was satisfied with the result. The biggest improvement was in my planning phase; unlike speech 2, where I had to haphazardly gather an audience due to a technical fiasco, or speech 3, where I had to infiltrate my mother's work, I was able to knock out the speech during Thanksgiving at my grandma's house. Excluding me, there were eight of us (and my dog Gizmo, but alas, he does not count) so I was not as stressed attempting to find an audience.

    Given that I was delivering the speech rather early, I made sure to have my notecards and sources ready to go, so I had everything pretty prepared beforehand and was far less stressed given that my audience was not a bunch of strangers. That may have been an easy way out, I know, but it was the best option for a live audience.

    When it came to the delivery, there was good and bad. I felt I was more relaxed than in my previous speeches, but there were still some struggles. I did get a bit thrown off at one point because the clock next to me started chiming. Similarly, I was in the middle of my introduction when my brother and cousin raised their hands at something I said as if to agree, which did throw me for a loop since I had to come up with a split-second response.

    To be honest, I did not incorporate many of the strategies I mentioned in my reducing communication apprehension assignment, but I did find some of my own ways to reduce my nerves. It was a bit of a cop-out, but I did find myself feeling at ease because Gizmo was looking over and wagging his tail for a lot of the speech. I also had my mother's phone next to me on a timer, so I knew how long my speech was and it helped a lot with pacing.

    My "school board" also helped a lot with hyping me up for the speech. I neglected to mention beforehand that I was doing it, so when my cousins heard I was doing a speech, they started chanting "Speech! Speech! Speech!" all excitedly and it really helped me loosen up.

    All in all, the environment this time around made my speech better this time around. The fact that I was more comfortable ultimately aided my speech, but it also made it a bit difficult to track my growth between this one and the third speech. One could argue I was better in this speech because of all the practice and experience, but it could just as easily be argued that this speech being better was a byproduct of being in a comfortable location with people I already know.