At the beginning of this course, I was quite anxious when I think of the oral presentation section. This is because I often feel nervous during previous oral presentations.
As our team had a hard time finding a common free time to practise as a group, our rehearsal was therefore insufficient. Hence, I’m quite worried on the night before and on that morning of the presentation. However, I’m thankful for having good team members who would often calm me down and give me words of encouragement and assurance.
During the presentation, I felt that I started off quite well; with a smile on my face and with the eye contact I established with the audience. However, later on I started to be inconsistent with my speed and I felt that I was more serious (therefore less smiles) nearing the end of it. I believe this is due to the nervousness that slowly took over me. At the beginning, I think it was the adrenalin rush that helped boost my overall confident appearance, but with the passage of time, I lost control of my calmness and thus stumbled with a few words and also I have to keep referring to my cue cards as I find it hard to recall my speech.
We mainly used Powerpoint slides with pictures. I felt that perhaps I could have used more pictures to give a clearer illustration, as I felt that many were confused with my explanation.
Dear Vee Nee,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that preparation is crucial to delivering a good presentation. Before a presentation, we may picture 101 things that we were going to say or do during the presentation but during the actual presentation, probably less than 50% of it comes out because of our nerves. That happens to me very often. Therefore, I think that adequate preparation is essential to delivering a smooth presentation.
Overall, I think that you did a great job with your presentation. I think that your delivery was smooth and sincere. You maintained good eye contact with the audience and kept a smile which showed your confidence. Your speech began to speed up towards the end but I think that this can be easily solved with more practice. :) I think that you could have made use of more gestures as you were clinging to your cue cards most of the time.
The Q&A session showed that you have a very good knowledge of your project. You remained calm and composed in the face of difficult questions from the audience. You were also polite when answering all the questions! Good job! :)
Dear Pei Zi,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your affirmation and honest feedback. Appreciate the valuable comment.
Yes I agree with you that we should take practice seriously and to rehearse as though you are in the real situation. I think another factor which is important besides adequate preparation is to remain calm throughout. This is because once you realised that you could not remember your speech it will really affect your overall performance. So, I think we must also learn how to control our emotions during presentation so that we can move on with the best that we can.
I tend to speed up as I deliver. This occurs to me during the Peer Teaching too. Something that I really need to take note off and improve.
You did a great job too for your presentation despite being sick! You exude great confidence throughout and you appear to me as a very stable presenter. Well done! :)
Cheers.
Hey VeeNee,
ReplyDeleteThank you VeeNee for sharing the GPS. You really did a good job! And I hope the 3 of us didn't scare you out! Other than what you mention, I feel that what could be improve a little more is some pause in between.
And for the problem regard to the cue cards, I also realize I do have the similar problem. So, I would suggest that writing down the whole script and highlight or bold the key words. By doing so, I agree we will have a number of cue card but the chance of us forgetting the script would be much reduce.
Last by not least, I do enjoy working with the 3 of you as a group! Despite the stuff about Esther! XD See you next week.
Hey Tommy!
ReplyDeleteThank you for concluding! Well, I was a little worried but not scared out so no worries.
Yes, I think I need to work on my pauses too as I'll tend to forget to pause when I'm anxious to finish my speech. Thanks for pointing that out.
Another way is to practise until we are well-versed with our speech so that don't even need to use cue cards :) That would be ideal.
I enjoyed working with the three of you too. I appreciate working and having fun at the same time. Thanks. :)