An Introspective View on One’s Oratorical Skills by Analyzing a Speech About George W. Bush

I gave my speech on George W. Bush; my intentions were to deliver a list of reasons why he wasn’t actually such a terrible guy and make it through my speech soundly. Even though I happened to survive my speech, and am very proud of that, after watching it myself and reviewing over what my peers had to say themselves about my speech, I’ve notice that I need to have some work done (that is of course, with my speech presentation skills).

I realized that my volume was great about 75% of the time and that is definitely a plus, however the rest of the time should have been there too, obviously it was not. When my volume did fluctuate, I noticed, was when I’d transition on to a different point. Because of those pauses, another matter has come to my attention, and that is, well, I don’t really have any viably strong transitions, pretty much at all. Another good thing I caught myself doing was I don’t believe it sounded as though I was reading a prompt, working in telemarketing I sort of expected that I not sound too robotic.

Working as a telemarketer, I’m trained to have a script sound like an improvised conversation and I believe that for my speech presentation that harshly may have affected me. I noticed that I’d use the filler words “and um” and “you know” often and even though I know that makes me not sound like a machine, it also makes it sound like I haven’t a clue what I speaking about. A second habit I must break is my fidgeting, every time I touch my face, I fix my dress or I stretch my legs I do it because it makes me relax on the phone and but in person everyone is seeing me do that! I was guilty of not preparing any notecards for my speech and that did make me a bit more unprepared for my speech, so, my usage of notecards could use some improving.

Ultimately the areas I deemed needed most improvement were related to how I physically presented my speech. In order to achieve any improvement, I plan to first learn to separate the way I speak on the phone with the way I should speak in front of a live audience. Secondly I will practice more and try to organize myself with notecards. Other than that I hope to just have fun.