Reflection on Oral Presentation

 

Preparation:

With the awareness rose from peer teaching that I was likely to fall into the trap of speaking too fast, my preparation was focused on making the extra effort to counter this. Firstly, I ensured that I did not squeeze too much information into the presentation such that I have to rush to cover everything that I had in mind. Secondly, when going through my script, I consciously slowed down my pacing. At any point when I started to speed up, I would stop and try that sentence again and continue speaking slowly. This directed preparation to counter my shortcoming is the strength of my preparations which had effectively prevented me from speaking too fast during the actual delivery.  

Delivery:

Personally, my greatest satisfaction of my delivery was my confidence and ability to control my emotions. Standing in front of a crowd, has never failed to make me nervous which translated into fast pacing and repeating points because I lose my train of thoughts. This time however, I managed to control these emotions. On one hand this could be due to the confidence that came with the countless preparation prior to the presentation. On the other hand, I personally think that my group had a part to play as well. Being the last speaker, I was able to view the performance of my whole team, and seeing each of them excelling beyond our practices, it gave me the motivation and encouragement that as the last speaker I had to do well and not let them down. When I took the step and began my presentation, I was glad that I was not overwhelmed by fear but rather, confidence built after each successful sentence. In the midst of presenting and connecting with the audience, I was also able to be conscious of elements that make a good presenter, noting my intonations, my formal tone, pacing and other non-verbal signs. These were detected by the audience, who eventually awarded me with heartening comments that gave me the satisfaction that all the efforts were worth it.

Nonetheless, I noticed that in the midst of my delivery, subconsciously, I began to use “so” as a filler for approximately 3 consecutive sentences. Thankfully, I became aware of this tendency and started to actively vet what I was going to vocalize next to prevent my presentation from being overly flooded with fillers.  On several occasions too, I stumbled and had to repeat certain things which I had said, this continues to be something for me to work on and I believe would be overcame by practice.

Use of PowerPoint slides and Visual Aids:

In my opinion, I think that my group had an effective use of PowerPoint slides. The slides were appropriately used to aid the presenter in getting their points across, where we ensured that not too much content are on it such that it overpowers the presenter and take the audience’s attention away from the verbal message.

For my section of the presentation, what worked really well was the use of pictures of students’ common behaviours in lecture to support the point that I wanted to drive across. The audience were able to relate to it and that definitely caught their attention and elevated the overall mood as I concluded the whole presentation.  

Conclusion:

Through this whole experience, I realised that being a good presenter is not an easy task. When presenting, one has to balance between being conscious not to make common personal mistakes, in my case pacing and the tendency of repetition, and at the same time, maintaining a connection with the audience through eye contact and presence.

As seen from the picture above, my greatest takeaway was the experience of working with my group. From our report to the final presentation, I would say that the oral presentation was truly the fruits of the labour that each and every one of us had planted into this project.