Self Evaluation #1

My spaghetti speech was impractical. I achieved my purpose, because I feel that I got my points across well, but I think my topic was ill chosen. As everyone was doing his or her speech, I started to feel anxiety because I felt that maybe my dish was too complicated for a demo speech. If I could do my speech all over again the first thing I would change is my topic, secondly I would practice a little more. During my speech, I definitely felt comfortable and confident, however I felt like I had so much information and not enough time. My speech turned out to be over 7 minutes, and I actually skipped over some parts. I think that my eye contact and tone was good, I’d probably give myself a seven for eye contact, but I did notice that I did one thing that was very distracting. My arms kept moving and I kept rocking myself with arms folded. I felt that this was very distracting and I was actually embarrassed watching myself do it.

My goals for improvement on my next speech are to not add in quotes last minute, because in my demo speech my speech went to long, which hurt my grade. In addition, I would like to practice more because I forgot some things and had to depend on my note cards too much. After watching my video, the first thing I noticed about my delivery is that I said—“umm” way to much which I also think is some thing I need to work on because it could be distracting. I think I did well on my source citations, I named two during my speech, I skipped one because I didn’t have time for the fact, and I forgot to give credit to my mom for giving me the recipe which should have been my fourth source. Compared to my classmates I think I did well on my sources because only very few people even gave sources. If I could grade myself I think I would give myself a “C” because I think my message came across clear, and my speech was organized— I gave a preview of my points then covered them in the same order. I did a lot of things wrong and that is why I knock myself down, I muddled my conclusion, I went over time, also I feel like I used my note cards to much. One bad thing is that I paused in my speech when I realized I was at 5 minutes I commented on being over time instead of just finishing my speech.

Honestly, I did not know that not having an actual demonstration would hurt my grade; I thought that having a visual aid was enough. If I had known that, I would have definitely picked another topic because it just was not feasible to carry all the ingredients to make spaghetti to school on Cal train. I guess another thing I could change is checking with my professor to make sure that my topic is actually practical. I would have to say that I am disappointed with the grade I did receive but it does motivate me to work harder for my next speech.