Speech Critique #2 Yazeed K.

Abughaliah George Mason University

Giving a speech in front of the public is something that a lot of people really fear, and I have been in this situation for many times. In the last few months, it was a period in which I gave many speeches. During this period, I have really improved in giving speeches publicly, and every speech that I present, I find that I have some areas of improvement in the speech that follows. I am credible to complete this self-critique because I have been enrolled in a public speaking class for almost 3 months and a half, and Professor Steele has been giving us a lot of tips in order to deliver a neat speech, so I know how speeches should go. The central idea of this essay is that I have improved between speech 5 and speech 8, however; there are still some areas I will need to improve for my final persuasive speech. Therefore, in this essay, I will explain the improvements between speech 5 and speech 8 in terms of content and delivery, and then I will explain what I will still need to work on in order to perform better for speech 10. First of all, there were some areas in terms of delivery on which I felt like I really improved between speech 5 and speech 8. Lucas (2012) points out vocalized pauses occur when speakers fill the silence between words with vocalization such as uh, er, and um (p.245). She also indicates that this can create negative perceptions about a speaker's intelligence. On the evaluation form that my professor gave me for speech 5, I found that I got a low grade because I made a lot of vocalized pauses, which made me seem unprepared. However, before speech 8, I worked really hard to avoid making vocalized pauses by rehearsing the speech several times, which made my speech much more effective and made me look more prepared and confident, so I feel that this is an area on which I really improved. Moreover, Lucas (2012) says good speakers use gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions to create a bond with their audience (p.249). Actually, when I watched the video of speech 5, I noticed that I almost did not move on stage, or made movements, but they were purposeless. On the other hand, in speech 8, I learned

from my mistakes, and I noticed myself that I was moving purposefully and comfortably on stage and between each main point, which really made me improve in this area and receive a higher grade. Furthermore, in terms of content, I feel that my content in speech 5 and speech 8 were fairly good, so I tried to keep doing what I did in speech 5. According to Lucas (2012), establishing credibility is a matter of being qualified to speak on a given topic. The establishment of ethos can make the audience more comfortable with the information they are hearing (Lucas, 2012). In speech 5 and speech 8, I noticed that a lot of my classmates were not telling why they are experts in their topics, and I was always saying why I am credible to talk about my topics, which I think is something that is really essential, and I am happy with that because I never forget to establish credibility. Moreover, in my speeches, I always try to come up with pieces of evidence whether they are quotes, definitions, statistics, or analogies, which is something that is really helping my speeches to be stronger, and it is something that I am really happy with. Finally, in my conclusion, for speeches 5 and 8, I always review the main points that I talked about to make sure that the audience are still on track with me and not forget what I said. Finally, there are some areas I really want to improve in order to show great performance for speech 10. Lucas (2012) says the skillful use of supporting materials often makes the difference between a poor speech and a good speech (p.142). In my previous speeches, I gave some satisfactory facts and statistics, but in speech 10, I hope I will come up with stronger evidence in order to make my speech memorable and persuasive, so that is something I hope to work more on. Also, in the last speeches, I was making fairly satisfactory movements and gestures, but I feel like I still can do better in this area, so I really would like to improve this. The final thing that I would like to improve is eye-contact. In some speeches, I make eye-contact

well, and sometimes I feel like I have to do better. So, for speech 10, I will try hard to make a good eye-contact with the audience in order to make them more connected and excited to hear my presentation. In conclusion, the central idea of this essay is that through speech 5 and speech 8, there were some areas that needed to be improved, and I worked to improve them, and I found that working to improve them made my speeches neater. Also, there are some areas I still need to improve for speech 10 such as, using stronger supporting materials, purposeful movements and gestures, and eye-contact. As I mentioned, I am noticing many improvements between speech 5 and speech 8 in terms of content and delivery, and there are still some areas that I will need to develop in order to give excellent speeches in the future. There is no such thing as Perfect presentation, but I am very satisfied with everything I learned in this course, and I hope I will still do better in the future.

References Lucas, S. (2012). The art of public speaking. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.