Monday, April 11, 2011

Reflections on my Oral Presentation


Finally the oral presentation is over!

One thing I realized is that no matter how many presentations we’re done before, the fear of doing an oral presentation will always be there. The nervousness and jitters I gets before it’s my turn to present will affect the performance of my oral presentation. Therefore, it is important that I learn to be more competent at giving a good oral presentation by consciously working on improving on my weaker points. 

In terms of preparation, I feel that having a speech text is good in helping me to prepare what I am going to talk about for the presentation. However I do feel that it can be rigid at times as we tend to memorise and regurgitate the script. Therefore I break down what I have to say into main points and elaborate the points with my own words during rehearsal. I have done numerous rehearsals with my team, However I feel that I could have put in more time and effort into my preparation for my individual part and be more familiar with all the main points that I am suppose to say.

For delivery section, I believe that I have used appropriate gestures to bring my points across to the audience. The volume of my voice was also loud enough to be heard by everyone in the audience. Some areas that I can work on to improve would be the speed of my presentation. As I get nervous, I tend to unknowingly start speaking faster, one way I can overcome this would be to use pauses and modulate my voice during my presentation.

Lastly, my group decided to use prezi for our presentation. I feel that it was a challenge as we’re not very competent with the software. Overall, the flow of the presentation turned out to be smooth and the effects were used appropriately to drive our points across. However, there are several aspects of our slides we can work to improve on like the size of the slides and content. I noticed during the presentation that several slides we had were too small to be seen clearly. Therefore, we can work to improve the visibility and standardization of the size for all slides.

In retrospect, oral presentation no doubt frightening can be overcome by adequate preparation. It is important as well to calm my nerves and remain relax so my performance for the actual oral presentation can be done better.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Jeremy,

    Well done for the presentation. At the earlier part of the presentation I feel that you were very prepared, you showed confidence. It was after the start of looking at the cue cards that some nervousness was shown. I agree that individual practice is needed to give a smooth delivery of our presentation.

    The gestures you used made you look enthusiastic about the topic. The speed of delivery was rather fast and sounded like you were rushing. The ideas you mentioned seems useful but a lot of practice would be needed to incorporate them into a presentation. Then again when is hardwork not needed when we want to do anything well.

    Regards,
    Peh Joo

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  2. Hi Jeremy (our top salesperson),

    Overall, I feel that you gave our presentation a great conclusion. I think that you placed good emphasis on the important parts and presented our proposal benefits convincingly. There were parts when you stumbled because of your nervousness but I don't think that it affect the overall delivery.

    I think that the overall recap you gave at the end was very effective. It shows more cohesion in our team's presentation and helped to strengthen the points which all the previous speakers have highlighted.

    One area which can be improved will be your facial expression. I think that it would be better if you could smile more. :)

    I think that the ending was very well crafted (I may be biased). No matter how many times I have heard that ending, I always get that urge to give you a standing ovation when you say the sentence "This is the vision our team has for the future". I think that we made a very good choice to have you to conclude the presentation and you delivered really well!

    Lastly, I will like to thank you for being such a wonderful team member! Despite the fact that you can easily choose to S/U this module and not place so much effort into it, you chose not to! This shows that you are a very responsible person. Thank you for your dedication in the project for the entire semester. It was a great pleasure working with all of you.

    Go Team Planet! :)

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  3. Hi Jeffrey (:

    I agree with Peizi that you could have smiled more as it helps dispel the image that one is nervous (when smiling the right way of course). I do feel that despite your nervousness, you did manage to conclude our presentation very well, placing emphasis on key points and really selling our team's vision for the future. It was a wonder that we didn't move our audience to tears (we forgot to hand out tissues. Haha)

    I also agree with you that our Prezi slides were lacking in the 'you' attitude for the audience has some slides were too small, and our green recycling booth looked really pixelated. I guess it all boils down to preparation, preparation, preparation. No one is perfect though, so I think we still did an awesome job given the circumstances.

    Here's to a Singapore that is no longer dependent on landfill!

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  4. Hi Jeremy,

    First of all, well done for your presentation. I could see that all your group hard work and preparation pay off.

    I feel that your gestures are use at mostly at the right time! This lead us to look at the screen through your hand gestures. But don't over do it. Cause it will be quite distracting.
    For the conclusion, you did well in wrapping up the others points and the outline of this project.

    But something that I don't feel right about is about using Prezi. I feel that if you have too many words in the presentation it would be still better to use PowerPoint as it seem a bit messy using that.

    Other than that, your group did well! Nice to know you and hope to see you around in school for your last 2 weeks of school! =)

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  5. Hey Jeremy,

    Despite your fears, I think you did a great job in wrapping up Team Planet's presentation! Your use of visualization/imagery to emphasize the benefits of your proposal was particularly effective. I have to admit something here - I borrowed the idea for my presentation! Not sure if I pulled it off as well as you did, though. =X

    I think your slides' font was ok. Maybe it was because you were presenting to a small audience in a close setting, so we were all able to make the words out. It would have been a different story in a large auditorium!

    All in all, excellent job, and all the best for your finals! =)

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