An Analysis of The Public Speaking and The Practice of Speech

In high school being able to deliver an adequate speech was a requirement in order to graduate, if you were unable to deliver the speech then you would be placed in a speech class where you give a speech every day, terrified by the agonizing pain that would bring me I ended up receiving a ninety five out of one hundred on my speech. After that day I felt a sense of relief, and also a great deal of achievement flamed inside of me, but more than anything I was relieved knowing that I would never have to do that again. Boy, was I wrong. I came to college, and in my last quarter of the year I had to take a public speaking class. In the beginning I was totally stoked because I figured if I could pull a ninety five out of one hundred in high school my first speech in college would be a piece of cake. Boy, was I wrong. Again.

On Wednesday, April 8, 2015 I gave a narrative speech in which I was supposed to talk about my culture, and where I come from, not to mention I was the first one. I felt very frightened during my narrative speech, and it was hard for me focus because I began to forget a lot of things I wrote about, overall I felt like I did not achieve my full potential. Before that we had an introduction speech where we basically just introduced ourselves, and I feel like I did much better on that one because it was more spontaneous compared to the narrative where I had time to practice a lot which instilled fear in my mind. I did like some things about my speeches like my tone of voice I felt to be very strong. I would like to improve on the flow of my speeches because I caught myself using “like”, and ”umm” also I need to be time conscience when giving speeches.

In my public speaking class I would love to learn how to alter the material that I had written, and have it be more extraneous compared to trying to remember word after word. Right now I believe I am a tender footed speaker meaning that I take too much precaution when speaking because I am more worried about messing up than actually remembering the fact, so it affects the overall flow of things. In the future I aspire to be a very rhythmic speaker where everything just flows because I know the facts, I just have an issue with delivery. Overall I feel as though I have the means to become the speaker I know I can be, but practice makes perfect!