Education and Speech-making is power for Democrats

Although this speech in no way represented my top form as a speaker, I feel like it contained some positive aspects.  I laid out a structured organization, spoke clear and loud, presented with confident body language, focused on an interesting and funny topic, and interacted with the audience.  Some things I can improve on include the opening, eye contact, not using silence fillers and integrating more discussion with the class.

Using an outline, transitions, and a summarizing conclusion made the speech easy to follow for the audience.  The outline at the beginning of the speech and the overhead pointed out where in the speech I was.  Lastly, the summary of all major points reaffirmed the knowledge I conveyed in the minds of the audience.

The clear and loud voice allowed the audience to understand the speech.  Also, the voice helped keep the audience interested and engaged.  Another engaging tool was my confident and positive attitude.  These two behaviors draw the attention of the people to me.

The audience felt the topic of relationships meaningful to their lives and a little humorous too.  For college students figuring out how to be a good boyfriend/girlfriend in a relationship stands as a difficult and mysterious task.  Any advice on the subject draws the interest of an audience.  Also, something about discussing differences between men and women usually creates a humorous situation.  Humor helps keep the audience interested and relaxes the speaker.

By interacting with the audience and asking them their opinions, the audience felt like part of the speech.  The audience changed their level of involvement from listening to interacting so I did not feel like a lecturer.  People take in and accept knowledge better, when they feel they helped to create this knowledge.

In addition to the positive attributes of the speech, some areas need improvement.  A smart, funny, or interactive opening may have helped this speech.  Starting off the speech with a bang would have set the tone for the rest of the time.  Also, I stuttered through stating the speech goal and this would have made the entire speech difficult if the audience was not so friendly.

Another problem involved getting into the habit of looking at the overhead too much.  After the first few looks, I became accustomed to the habit and spent a quarter of the time looking down.  I knew the information and could have kept eye contact with the audience to engage them more.

The use of silence fillers during the first couple minutes of the speech detracted from my confident appearance and expressed to the audience a lack of knowledge about the topic.

Cutting out half of the main content headings stands as my last recommendation.  Less content allows room for more interaction with the audience and exploration of each idea.  I had more questions to increase the involvement of the audience and some funny thoughts from the book to make the speech funnier that I did not use do to time constraints.

Although I would redo the speech differently if I gave it again, the positive elements of the speech imparted some meaningful information to the audience, thus achieving my goal.