Reflection on My Project Pitch

I thought that during my speech I accomplished a few things that I had worked on prior to giving my speech. One of these included my use of eye contact with the class. I had really made it a priority to keep eye contact with my peers as I gave my speech, and to not read off of the slides. I wanted the slides to be there only if I forgot what I was supposed to say next, but fortunately I didn’t run into that problem. Another thing I tried to accomplish was the use of my hand gestures. Last semester my teacher had told me that I needed to work on the hand gestures while giving a speech. I had asked my roommate to watch my speech and tell me if I was using enough hand gestures, or if I was over using the hand gestures and kind of forcing it. I thought that my strengths throughout the speech were the use of hand gestures, eye contact, my tone, and the topic that I chose. I feel like I was able to catch the attention of my peers by using such an intriguing topic such as the Lexington Humane Society. It really seemed to me that they were genuinely interested in what I was saying. Some of my weaknesses were when I paused and took a while to think of what I was going to say next. When I had rehearsed my speech I had a comfortable 4 minutes and 50 second speech, but while giving my speech it seemed that I didn’t even reach 4 minutes. I think I sped through my speech and didn’t take my time in giving it because I was afraid to go over 5 minutes.In my future speaking opportunities I want to be more confident while giving my speech. I am not saying that I was not confident while giving my speech, but there were parts of the speech that I felt like I spoke very quietly because I was nervous or because I wasn’t sure which direction I was going with a point. I thought overall I did a good job in giving my speech and presenting the information to my classmates.