Friday, November 4, 2011

Reflection on Oral Presentation


Apart from peer teaching, this is the second formal presentation I had so far. I think my oral English did improve comparing to my peer teaching period, but I still need a lot of practice.

The moment I stood in front of the class, I felt so nervous that I nearly forgot what I should say to begin my part. However, as I slowly went on my part of the presentation I didn’t feel as nervous as the beginning, and I could focus on what I wanted to convey. The more I could focus on my words, the more confidence I was.

To be honest, I just practiced a few times before my peer teaching rehearsal, so I did not do well on that rehearsal. When I felt sorry about my performance, Chris told me that practices makes perfect. Following his advice, I practiced again and again this time. I also asked my teammates if my content is good enough to go. Thanks to their advice and the rehearsal with them, I had a better performance today!

I think I remembered to make eye contact with my audience and keep my body in a good gesture. What’s more, I kept my content to be clear and concise. I also increased my tone and slowed down in certain parts to emphasis the key words. But I was a bit nervous during some parts, especially when I made some mistakes. Therefore, I did not finish what I had prepared to say in my part.

My part covers methodology and summary, so I used bullet points instead of pictures to illustrate my points. However, I think the arrangement of these bullet points is not very good. Some of them overlap each other. Maybe I should use simple phrases instead of sentences.

Hope I can do better in the future!
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Please feel free to leave comments! Your advice can help me improve a lot! Thank you!

7 comments:

  1. Hi Zoey,
    Though I am not the “official” peer evaluators, I would just like to leave some comments.
    I was really amazed by your performance today. I have to give you the thumbs up for having great voice projection and eye contact during the OP.
    For the slide on the “target locations”, I thought it would be better if pictures were used instead of words. Apart from this, I couldn’t see other weaknesses (given that I was astonished by your presentation today).

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  2. Dear Zoey,

    I couldn't help it but be dazed by your performance. I thought you presented a very clear case and the hard work is definitely evident :) I had some problems with your pronounciation and soft voice previously. However, today, I could see that you have overcome these 2 issues.

    I agree with what Klara pointed out, where she mentioned that you might wanna consider using photos to illustrate the targeted locations. Although I'm from Science, I couldn't identify with some of the locations (where is S12?). Therefore, using photos will definitely ease your explanation :)

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  3. Hi Zoey, thanks for sharing your preparation process as well!

    I agree with what the others have mentioned, but anyhow, here's my additional feedback!

    Strengths:
    - Clear and coherent, it was easy to understand what you were saying.
    - Although you said you were nervous, I couldn't tell! You definitely sounded very well prepared.

    Weaknesses:
    - While you were very clear, I felt that you could have been more expressive. I am not sure if it was the content that you were presenting that made your presentation quite dry.

    In general, I think the presentation slides were too wordy (the entire group's). The slides seemed very "crowded".

    Other than that, cheers to a well-prepared presentation!

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  4. Hi Zoey,

    Here's my feedback from your presentation:

    Strengths:
    -Confidence
    -Clarity, i can see that you definitely learnt to keep your sentences short and sweet, helped us to digest what you were saying very well
    -Bravery, you were the last speaker of your team, which is a really big task since the last speaker has to leave a lasting impression on the audience.
    -Eye contact was excellent

    Weaknesses:
    - Conclusion was a little rushed
    - Looked at the computer screen quite a bit

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  5. Hi Zoey,

    I think I can know your feeling better than anyone else in this class. When I was doing my first pure-English presentation, I was so nervous that I even lost control of my voice in the beginning.

    I felt that you were well-prepared for the OP. Your voice showed that you were quite confident.

    I also noticed that you looked at the screen quite often during your OP and soon you looked back to the audience. If my guess was correct, your realized that you should make more eye contact to the audience when your looked at the screen.

    Overall speaking it is a good job.

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  6. Hi Zoey, I think you've made great leaps in terms of your OP especially as English is not your first language! I do not think I can present in Mandarin at all. haha anyway, I felt that with preparation, you were able to compose yourself well and gave the final OP your best presentation yet. Your voice was strong, and your points clear. However you did rush through some points faster than needed. It would have been better if you slowed down your speech just alittle bit. But all in all, it was a good presentation!

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  7. Thank you guys for all the comments you left! I will keep going with all your advice! :D

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