My strengths
The course has really helped in developing my oral communication skills. Through the first strength, I have acquired the ability to manage my emotions during public speaking. Before the course, I used to be anxious and nervous before delivering a speech; however, right now am capable of staying calm and collected during oral speaking. My second strength is the ability to deliver a summarized speech. Salem (2019) states that long speeches can make your audience to get bored and disinterested in your speech. I have learned how to organize my speech in an orderly manner and rehearsed several times before delivering a speech. Before the course, I did not know how to give a summarized speech, and often time would run out before I completed my speech.
Areas to Improve
Though the course has tremendously helped me in sharpening my oral speaking skills, I believe that there are some areas I still need to improve. The first area to improve is the ability to integrate my body language with the speech I am delivering, especially facial expressions. According to Salem (2019), facial expression is one of the effective ways to engage you’re your audience. Feedbacks I get from my audiences state that I need to improve on my facial expression to match some aspects of my speech. The second area of improvement is to deal with critics. Though I have made progress in accepting constructive criticism, it is often challenging to deal with negative criticism. Some people give disheartening feedbacks that may make a person give up on public speaking. I have to learn to accept that negative feedback is part of life and learn to ignore such people and only focus on improving my oral speaking skills.
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Status of my set goals
I would like to say I am delighted with the progress I have made in achieving the goals I had set early. I am confident to say that I can currently deliver a speech without being anxious or having an emotional meltdown and coherently delivered my speech. I have worked on my confidence, especially in managing stage fright. I have trained myself on taking three deep breaths before commencing a speech and recently delivered a full speech in a calm and collected way, much to my surprise. Expanding my critical thinking abilities is still a work in progress and currently working on sharpening my cognitive thinking. My desire is to be able to deliver speeches on various topics and issues touching the community, and that can only be achieved if I progressively work on my critical thinking capacity.
Reference
Salem, A. (2019). A Sage on a Stage, to Express and Impress: TED Talks for Improving Oral Presentation Skills, Vocabulary Retention and Its Impact on Reducing Speaking Anxiety in ESP Settings. English Language Teaching , 12 (6), 146-160.
