Introduction
Public speaking skills are essential in the contemporary world since they contribute to a person’s academic and career achievements. To improve the ability to deliver speeches in public, people should have a chance to look at themselves through the eyes of their audience. In this way, they can notice the strengths and weaknesses of their performance and try to eliminate the discovered drawbacks in the future. For this reason, I am going to watch the video of my speech delivery and analyze my public speaking skills.
Main body
It seems that the most reliable way of finding out whether the presentation was successful is to check the audience’s feedback. After I delivered my speech, the listeners applauded me, so I can assume that they liked my report. Moreover, I heard a surprised sound from the audience when I expressed my recommendation as to the consumption of vitamins. It makes me think that my speech was interesting and useful for the listeners.
I do not think that the presence of the camera contributed to my anxiety. However, I believe that delivering a speech while being recorded is more complicated than speaking in front of people without a camera. When people perform in front of the audience and know that they will later appear on a video, which can be seen by many other people, the number of their listeners is enlarged. Therefore, speakers feel greater responsibility for their performance, which may increase their anxiety.
However, I think that it does not apply to the cases when a person records the speech while he or she is alone. In this case, it is possible to stop recording when anything goes wrong and start delivering the presentation anew.
While delivering the speech, it is essential to let the audience know where the mentioned evidence comes from. It is also important to make sure that the audience can trust the cited sources. To achieve this, the speaker should provide as much information about references as possible, including the authors’ credentials and dates of publication (Griffin, 2016). For this reason, I cited each of my sources orally, but I think that I could have done it more accurately.
For example, in my report, I cited Raymond Francis, but I did not clarify how old was his research, which I used to support my claims. However, I let my listeners know that Raymond Francis was a doctor and a brilliant and advanced thinker, which proved his trustworthiness. I also mentioned a recent article published in 2019, but I think that my audience could have failed to figure out who had written that article.
Considering the discovered issues, I am determined to do differently several things concerning writing and delivering my speech. First, I will try to provide more information about each of the cited sources. I will tell the listeners the authors’ names, credentials, and dates of publication. Second, I noticed that I looked at my notes almost all the time. Such behavior usually causes a loss of connection with the audience due to the lack of eye contact (North, n.d.). Therefore, I will try to look at my listeners more often to establish a connection and see their immediate feedback.
Conclusion
To sum up, I consider my speech delivery quite satisfactory. Despite some flaws in citing the sources and little eye contact with the audience, the listeners seemed to like my report because of its relevant topic and useful recommendations. Since I have discovered my weaknesses, it is up to me to deal with them and take them into account while preparing for my next public performance.
References
Griffin, C. L. (2016). Invitation to public speaking – National Geographic edition (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
North, M. (n.d.). 10 tips for improving your public speaking skills. Web.