Senior speech night at my old high school Ragsdale was very significant. I knew that it could either make me or break me. If I did not complete the speech I could possibly not pass English 12, meaning I did not meet the requirements to graduate. I had already had an A in the class and I wanted to maintain my average by making an A on my speech. I had worked so hard on my speech; I had practiced it several times prior to my speech night. On speech night I was very nervous; in fact, I had never been as nervous as I was this particular night. I had not eaten since breakfast my nerves had really got the best of me. Before walking into the school I had held my hand out and it was shaking out of control and my knees began to get weak. I am a very …show more content…
I did not want to potentially get penalized because of my appearance. I choose to wear a nice pants suit with a comfortable wedge heel. This way I knew I could not get point taken off for having clothes that revealed my knees or exposed parts of my body. I was very comfortable and ready to begin my speech. When I first walked into the room I was under the impression that there would be three judges. By my surprise there were five. I was not sure if that would help my score or perhaps hurt it. My nervousness went to an extreme level. All the judges looked at me with a blank stare showing no emotions at all. All that was in my mind was completing my speech that I had worked so hard and studied days for. I had worked very hard on my display board and brochure. From collecting important materials to choosing the proper diagrams to parade them. My display board had pictures of me and my mentor, and my brochure contains information about the benefits that social services had to offer to families. As I began my speech I was worried that I would not meet my eight-minute mark. For every minutes I was under was certain amount of points off, and I could not risk having points taken off. As I had practiced my speech that morning in class I could only make it to seven
Having never done this before, I really didn?t know how long my speech should last
Each speech was written as we strived to choose the right words that would have exactly the right impact on the crowd. I became more anxious as I tried to prepare myself to give my last speech. I cleared my throat and I was suddenly the first one in line. I stepped up to the microphone and began flipping through a pile of loose papers searching for the speech I had written, analyzed, read, and re-read. Just as quickly, I came across a paper with my name written across the top. I took a deep breath and began to read it aloud. My nerves were a little more at ease as I read through the text I had written. I spoke naturally and fluently just as the day before when I practiced. I took time to look into the crowd. As I scanned the crowd I spotted my parents once again, and just like before they began to excitedly
A powerful speech can leave a huge impact and create a lasting memory, either good or bad.
Eidenmuller, Michael E. Great Speeches for Better Speaking: Listen and Learn From America’s Most Memorable Speeches. New York: Mcgraw Hill, 2008. Google Books. Web. 4 September 2010.
The introduction mentioned this as I stated this is how I would prepare someone to go skiing. By including my own experience, I gave myself credibility and brought attention to the topic by saying I had been skiing ever since I could walk. It also prepared the audience for what to expect from the speech. The first transition was smooth because it went from overview to the first topic, but the next few transitions could have been improved. I wrote what I wanted to say on the notecard, but when it came time to conclude the paragraph, the transition did not sound as good as I would have like it to.
I believe I am a strong leader and I use my leadership abilities to improve the school as often as I possibly can. One of my strongest leadership skills is communication. I believe that it is vital to talk to others and get others input before making decisions. In the school, I ask other students their opinions on different events and I bring them back to the council frequently. Another leadership ability I possess is creativity. I always attempt to come up with creative and unique ideas to contribute to the council. For example, in meetings I always attempt to share new and different ideas to benefit the council. An important skill for leaders to possess is organization. I show this trait by using a binder to organize my agendas and showing up to every meeting.
University 101 has helped me acclimate me to college life at Northern Illinois University. When I first started here, I was extremely nervous for the new environment I was going into rather blindly. However, after taking UNIV 101, I learned some valuable information to better myself for my future college endeavors. Thanks to my professor, peer educator, classmates, the novel, and the text book, I will be able to continue throughout college with confidence and stability.
My project that I will be doing for my Senior project is helping out the Swan Falls Assisted living center here in kuna. I would be playing games, helping them get around, make cookies, and anything else they need. I want to give back to my community and help others out as much as I can. I also would like to donate blankets and warms socks to everyone that lives there since it’s winter and its cold. It’s a very nice and generous thing to do and some of those people in there don’t get to see their family since they live out of town, work, or medical issues.
I had a great laugh writing this speech and even more of a laugh delivering it - especially as the Best Man (and everyone else) had no idea it was coming and he was geeing himself to stand up!! Hope this helps other Brides planning a speech.
Writing a speech is easy. Telling someone about a speech you have to give is easy. Practicing your speech is easy. Giving a speech is not. Through my public speaking class I learned a lot about the art of giving speeches, creating a logical outline of my speech, and a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of my public speaking ability. My overall strengths as a speaker are that I can maintain eye contact with an audience and can convey the passion I have for certain topics to my audience. My overall weaknesses are that I can get caught talking to fast, causing me to skip sentences or words, and my ability to create an outline for my speech. I will go through my informative and persuasive value speech looking at three different criteria’s, content, delivery and overall assessment, and asses myself thoroughly. Even though I do not have the audio to my informative speech, I can still assess my mannerisms and eye contact.
The Informative speech was much harder for me to grasp on to right from the beginning, I knew what I need to do in general to be successful but my topic was so broad I had a hard time narrowing it down how I wanted to present the information. My introduction was
January 15, 16, 17, and 18, 2016 are the days that I want to remember for my senior year. Those few days were the 2016 unitown and Leadership Camp. This was my second year going into unitown, but this time I was going in as a counselor rather than a delegate. Going into the camp I already had an idea on what I expected because of last year but well. I was emotionally drained.
Picture this. It's your senior year of high school and you’ve been given the opportunity to give a speech to your underclassmen. Feeling pretty confident in your ability, you begin to jot down your speech and practice. After all the hard work you put in, you deem yourself ready.
I have also learned about different types of audiences and speeches including persuasive, informative, entertaining and delivering special occasion speeches. It came to my attention that whenever I was making these presentations or speeches, I needed to do so with confidence, consistence and practice before the actual presentation and completely eliminate the element of panic. It was also clear that capturing the attention of the audience and engaging them in the whole process, it was necessary to have a very strong introduction and also try and use visuals to deliver the message. It was therefore vital to respect each person’s diversity and cultural values (Lucas, 2011).
I had a lot of information on my mind, but the tension obstructed the flow of my words. Therefore I could not speak continuously, and accurately to the point. The fact that English is not my native language might have also been a reason for this. Therefore I was not satisfied with my performance.