Public Speaking Reflection free essay sample

I used to define public speaking as a simple, casual conversation with my audiences. However, I realize that I was wrong after completing Comm. 20. Through a series of learning objectives for this course, I have come to an understanding that public speaking is actually a life skill. As I progress through this course, these learning objectives have become guidelines for my speeches and helped me improve in my public speaking skills. The first learning objective is about how to identify and access a socially and intellectual topic, then compose and deliver an oral presentation on this topic. As the semester first started out, I vaguely understood what this objective meant or how it could be applied to my speech. The topic for my first speech, the tribute speech, vaguely had any socially significance. As a result, I only managed to complete a part of the first objective for my first speech, which was delivering an oral presentation with a keyword outline. As the semester proceed, I started to gain more knowledge about how to choose a socially and intellectual significant topic. With the informative speech, I was able to incorporate the idea that the goal of this speech was to educate and increase the audience’s knowledge as well as to raise their awareness about an issue or matter. Through these newly incorporated materials, I was able to analyze whether or not the topic I chose was significant. By the end of the semester, I have a full knowledge of what the first learning objective is all about. So not only did I need to choose a significant topic for my last speech (the persuasive speech), but I also need to convince my audience that my topic was socially significant. Then, I would deliver an oral presentation using note cards or a keywords outline. As this first learning objective guide me through my speeches, I realize that this objective is an important objective to meet. One valuable lesson that I have obtained while I delivered my speeches was that my audiences are most likely to be distracted from the speech if the topic of the speech was not significant to them. Knowing importance of this first objective, I feel that I will have to revisit it in the future when I am in a working environment as a businessperson. When I deliver my speeches to engage consumer to buy my product, I need to find significance of the product in order to attract their attention. The second learning objective is about being able to engage in an analytical and critical listening. At the beginning of the semester, I was able to engage in an analytical listening but not quite critical. For the first speech, I was able to listen and analyze the speech according to the peer review guidelines. However, my view of analysis was very limited because I was only able to identify what is missing from the speech, such as purpose or credibility. As I got farther into the semester, I was able to identify more ways on how to actively peer review. For instance, I was able to point out pieces of unclear informations from the speeches and formulate critical questions to ask the speakers. Especially for the last speech, the second learning objective was highly applicable. I was actively engaged in an analytical and critical listening. For the persuasive speech, I was able to analyze the speech through series of questions of whether or not the speeches contain fallacies. Also, I was able to come up with critical questions that challenge the speeches. When I am engaged in analytical and critical listening, I feel like I am actually doing a personal reflection of what I should or should not being doing for my own speech. With this analogy, I believe that the second learning objective is important to meet. Knowing how important this objective can be, I am certain that I will be applying this skill whenever I am listening to a speech or presentation. Through the engagement of analytical and critical listening, I will be able to find ways on how I can improve on my speech and presentation. The third objective is about how I can analyze the audience, adapt to diverse audiences, and use the informations to form the purpose of the speech. For my first speech, I have completely leaved out this objective from my speech. As the semester started out, I vaguely understand what this object is all about. When the audience listened to my tribute speech, they may have felt that it was a little irrelevant because it did not connect to them. As a result, I have made sure that I have related the topic of my second speech to my audiences. However, I did not realize that I was so distracted by forming a connection with the audiences that I have forgotten to mention about the actual purpose of my speech. For the last speech, I was not only able to connect my speech to the audience but also develop a purpose that would focus on a group of target audience only. This objective is important because as I have said before the audience will think the topic of the speech is irrelevant if it has no connection to them. So, in the future I will be revisiting this objective again because as a businessperson I will have to build connections between consumers and the product in order for them feel that the product is relevant to their life and they should buy it. The final learning objective is about the ethical responsibility of speaker. This objective was really confusing to me at the beginning of the semester, so I did not include any understanding of economic, legal, and social issues in my tribute speech. As I advance through the semester, I have gained more knowledge about this objective and was able to incorporate it into my second speech. I was able to incorporate economic and legal into the topic of my informative speech. By the end of the semester, I have gained full knowledge about this objective and was able to analyze it within my final speech. For instance, I was able to analyze that economic issues were the causes of my topic in the persuasive speech. Having a full knowledge about the third objective, I have realized that this objective is generally important to meet. The reason for this is that when a topic has a slight understanding of economic, legal, and social issues, it makes the topic seems more relevant to society and urges to the audiences to focus on it more. Since this objective is important, I know I will be revisiting it in the future of my career. In order to convince the consumer to buy the product, I must give the consumer a rough understanding of how it can beneficial to them economically. Public speaking is not just a casual conversation, but rather it is life skill. Through these series learning objectives, I know that I can be outstanding in my public speaking skills as long as I follow these guidelines. These guidelines will also guidelines for my career for public speaking is the main source of my career.