MY BEST ADVICE:

To Wylie, Week 1 DBQ

Hi Wylie,
I loved your presentation! I felt like your delivery was great: you spoke loudly, clearly and with confidence. Your eye contact was great. I liked your style technique of telling an ice breaker joke to put yourself and the audience at ease. I too, have issues with blanking out about what I am going to say, but I think that with enough rehearsal, you could overcome that issue. I also wanted to mention that I experienced a timing issue for this project, so I went back to my speech, cut a few statements, and then timed myself. Perhaps this method could help you figure out your pacing for time allotment requirements as well. Altogether, great work!

WHY IT IS MY BEST ADVICE:

My post initially started with all the things I liked about Wylie’s presentation.  I think it helps me as a public speaker to understand what people connected with in their speech, so I feel that is really important to provide others with that information.  Regarding my suggestions with the timing issue, I think that this is my best advice so far in the course, even if I didn’t know the extent of it at the time.  After the first dry run, going back to the speech (particularly the outline) is important in order to detect areas that may need to be cut due to time issues, flow, and comprehension.  I have done this with the last three speeches and I believe this has been key to their success.

BEST ADVICE FROM MY PEERS:

From Julia, Week 2, DBQ 2

Hi Candace! I really enjoyed your speech describing the object that holds so much meaning to you. I think you described it well, and even ringing it for a quick second helped gather the full moment a lot better. Something that could maybe be touched up could be slowing down your speech slightly so that you aren’t just jumping from sentence to sentence, but other than that you did a great job of staying in the time frame and making sure the audience gets a full understanding of what this object holds for you.

WHY IT IS THEIR BEST ADVICE:

I think this is the best advice that I have received so far.  When Julia stated that I should slow down my speech, she did it a constructive, encouraging manner.  This prompted me to read her advice carefully to understand what she meant.  I was able to recognize that I was talking too fast to fit in the content.  At that point, I went back to my speech outline to determine if there were any items or phrases I could cut out.  This revision allowed me to slow down my pacing while fitting everything within the specified time frame, so I was able to fix two problems associated with the speech in one action.  Thanks for your help Julia!

MY BIGGEST STRIDES

I feel like I have made the most strides so far in Week 4’s speech.  My original version was way over time ( 1:41 ).  That was really the only critique from my peers.  I recognized that I was over and with my peers’ comments as a confirmation, I was motivated to go back and edit some of the content.  By doing this, I was able to remove extraneous information.  When I was discussing how Dad was not a stellar parent, I realized that there were some statements that would not be suitable for my certain family members to hear in a eulogy (and they  kind of sounded like excuses for my dad’s manner), so I edited them (old 1:43-new 1:31).  I felt like my eye contact, my pauses, my tone had improved the second time through rehearsal.  I felt like my final version was more conversational with better eye contact.  I had felt that I wasn’t satisfied with my eye contact in the first version, so I worked hard to overcome that in the final.  I also liked my second version conclusion (4:39) over my dry run conclusion (6:15) due to my more conversational manner and eye contact-it felt more personal to me.   Feedback from Professor Miller stated that I should have included more stories regarding the car rides-if I could do this over again, I would revisit that.  However, overall, I am really proud of this speech.

THE SECRETS TO MY SUCCESS