Ever since a very young age, I had great difficulty with public speaking. Growing up as an only child, I was known to be the shy kid, which did not help my communication skills. I never liked giving presentations in class. The first time I had discovered improvement in my oratory ability was in 2005, during the freshman year of high school, where I gave a speech to a group of over 400 students. Yet, I continued to be nervous, which caused me to speak at a fast rate. However, I began to enjoy giving presentations and speeches. Even at the beginning of this quarter, I was nervous when I had to talk in this class.

Throughout this quarter, one major improvement I made was reducing my speed in public speaking.
From the first impromptu speech, I was given the question “Which person from the past would I like to meet?” Impromptu allowed me to be decisive and think of what to say on the spot, which is very crucial in many of life’s situations. For the story telling, I learned the importance of shortening speeches to be more succinct. From the technical presentation, I learned the possibility of having technical difficulties. From the retirement speech, I applied concepts from previous experiences in the quarter but realized that I needed to improve in nonverbal communication.

Overall, I learned a lot this quarter and made improvement in my public speaking. Of all the speeches, the impromptu appeared to be most useful in many of life’s situations where one will need to make a speech in front of a large audience without preparation. That is also the case in conversational communication with others. Yet, there are many areas that need improvement especially in the nonverbal communication.