Notes

In terms of presentations, I felt that overall, I did pretty good. For this being my first five-minute speech, I felt my execution of the presentation was not only adequate but went much better than I expected. I think my biggest downfalls were that I do not know how to make an outline correctly and I did not include my citations verbally and only included them visually. The goal of this paper is to look further into my informative speech presentation and hopefully learn something useful to help me better my presentations in the future.
Starting from the beginning, I felt that my topic was appropriate and moderately interesting for the audience. I believe that my specific purpose of informing the audience about the game within the game of baseball and why it is important to me was covered and accomplished throughout my speech. I felt that all my points and slides pertained to my speeches specific purpose, and the slides specifically helped to clarify and accentuate some of my topic points. I felt that I did a good job of engaging the crowd and explaining my specific purpose along with my slide presentation and why the images on it were important.
I felt that my speech organization could have been better but was not completely awful. I felt that my points connected and made sense, but if I had been allotted a longer time to present, I could have tied my speeches main points together much better. I felt my introduction was fairly short and to the point and fulfilled the purpose of an introduction flawlessly. On the other hand, I felt that my conclusion was slightly rushed and could have been better. I had to cut out the last 30 seconds of my speech and slightly rush the ending because I mildly overprepared for the presentation; however, I feel that I did a good job of rapping it up on the fly and ending my speech just in time. I felt that the main points of the body were clear and easy to follow; however, my use of transitions between the topics was slightly subpar. Again, I tried to somewhat rush the speech, so I ended up leaving out at least one of my prewritten transitional phrases; however, I think my recover was pretty solid. For organization as a whole I would say that I did pretty good, but to make sure to focus on my main purposes seamlessly flowing together and my transitional statements to help that happen.
When it comes to supporting materials and citations this is where I think it gets tricky. I believe the research that I conducted was thorough and well planned. I believe I also adapted some of the terms and made them easier to understand for the audience. This adaptation however, led to a deduction of points for not quoting the source but instead explaining what the source was saying while projecting it on the screen. Next time I will make sure to read the source word for word and explain its contents after instead of what I did during this presentation. I did use the criteria in the book for using effective supporting material and also used at least one source from the MTSU Walker Library. As previously stated, I did make an effort to use clear nontechnical language, and when I was forced to use technical language, I feel that I helped to describe what the true meanings of the terms were in an understandable fashion.
As previously stated, I did begin my speech without rushing however I feel that I ended in a rushing manor. I do not know how it looked from an audience members perspective but, just from evaluating the information that I was forced to withhold, I felt that the conclusion was slightly rushed. I feel that my use of pauses, pitch change, and physical actions help to execute my speech and give it somewhat of a conversational tone. I maintained eye contact throughout the whole speech only breaking to read one of my sources as a direct quote. As previously stated, I felt that my use of visual aids in the form of a slide show helped to both further explain some of my topic points and also served as an example of the topics I was explaining. I believe that I followed the guidelines in the textbook for presenting visual aids spectacularly and this category might have been my strongest.
Overall, I was most pleased with my actual execution of the presentation and the confidence that I displayed while presenting. I felt that I did great overall and if I were to present this speech again, I would change nothing except making sure to verbally include my citations and not just visually include them. I would also try to perfect my timing as to not be so rushed at the end of my speech.