Standing in front of a group of audiences and making a
presentation has always been my Achilles’ heel. I am likely to get nervous on
stage all the times, not because everyone was looking at me but because I was so
anxious of how to put my ideas and thoughts into words and deliver them fluently
to the audience. Due to this weakness, I always penned down, word by word, whatever I was going
to say and tried to memorize them. Unfortunately due to the tenseness
on stage, I always tend to lose my mind and miss out some information that I previously planned
to present.
Recalling the presentation that I did this afternoon, I felt
that I could do better if I articulated clearer and was livelier in my speech
by changing my facial expression and tones along the way. The positive comments
given by some classmates, such as Maeve, Ivy, Jessica and Sean, were very encouraging and
alleviated my tension. My instructor, Brad, also praised me and I was very
delighted because I felt that all my hard work - having spent more than 6 hours
doing my Powerpoint slides – truly paid off.
This presentation was different from other presentation that
I did in the past because the assessment was mainly focused on the presentation
skills rather than the contents. It was a worthwhile attempt as it gave us an
opportunity to discover our personal strengths in presentation as well as our flaws.
It also provided some useful presentation tips that we could apply on in our future
presentations.
It was a valuable afternoon watching other classmates’ presentation
and exchanging feedbacks on the performances. Though my presentation performance
did not meet my personal expectation, I am overall pleased with myself today. Hope
that my next presentation would be an excellent one.
Thank you, Kaiyao, for the detailed reflection---and for the presentation itself. It's heartening to see hard work pay off. Your slides certainly showed that you had made great effort. The organization of ideas was also well structured. Finally, your demeanor was quite confident and your delivery professional. If I were asked to give one piece of advice to you for the future it would be this: Channel some of your preparation and practice energy into recording yourself (audio or video) and listening back. Pay particular attention to your pronunciation/language use. You may even want to practice **reading** a script aloud, though you don't need to memorize it.
ReplyDeleteYour English writing is certainly improving, Kaiyao, as shown by the very fine essay you just submitted. Your spoken English and pronunciation in specific can be improved. (When I was a kid I had more serious problems in pronunciation and attended speech therapy for several years.) Nowadays there are many ways to address this. One way is by finding on Youtube songs that you like (in English, of course) and singing in the language (even if you just do it in the shower!). Another is by listening to audio books. This might be a long term project for you. But don't be dissuaded. You're still young and energetic!
Best of luck in your future speaking engagements!
Hi Brad,
DeleteThanks for your compliments and advices. You reminded me one of my English teachers in secondary school who did ask us to record down our voice while reading a passage and practise reading for repeated times until we were flawless. She said that to help us to prepare for our 'O' level oral exam. Unfortunately, I turned a deaf ear to her advice, maybe because I couldn't find myself a recorder (fyi, I did not own a handphone in secondary school days and my classmates were holding those black and white handphones).
Actually I could articulate well if you were to give me a script to read. But if you were to ask me to express my own thought or feeling verbally, I could not put them into words instantly. As such, some words are stuck in my mouth and resulting me not able to articulate clearly. I guess the best way for me to improve is to speak up more. Arh...forget it!
Thank you for all your help over these 13weeks. Take care! God Bless!