Introduction Speech - Reflection

Unless you reflect on your previous speech and think about what you did right and what you need to improve upon, it is unlikely you will grow from one speech to the next. 

In my experience, the tendency of many public speaking students is to gloss over the self-evaluation assignments.  These students offer a collective “Whew!  Glad that’s done!” and move on to the next assignment without investing the time to think about how and why they did or did not accomplish their previous speech goal. As a result, they continue to carry the same mistakes from the previous speech into the next one. 

Students who seem to benefit most from the self-evaluation assignments are those who provide specifics, including successes/errors made in topic selection, research development, speech preparation, speech organization, speech practice, and aspects of the final delivery.  The self-evaluation requires you look through two lenses – what you personally experienced during the speech process as well as how your efforts were viewed from an audience perspective. 

If you merely state in your self-evaluation that you did this or that, and you thought it was successful without considering what feedback you received on the outcome from your classmates and instructor, you are not fulfilling an important aspect of the self-evaluation assignment.

Information regarding this assignment is found on pp. 51-52 of the text.  While the text indicates your paper should be one-page, double-spaced, I require you to go into greater depth!

As you prepare your reflection paper, explain how you did or did not spend enough time gathering information, preparing and practicing your speech.  Indicate what timetable you followed in these steps.

How did you select information and prepare it in a creative and interesting way for your audience?

How was your information effectively organized for ease of audience understanding?

Refer to the speech rubric to consider eye contact, body language, language, articulation, pronunciation, use of note card, and achievement of time requirements.

A sample reflection/self-evaluation paper is found below:

Intro Speech Eval Sample.pdf Download Intro Speech Eval Sample.pdf