Zachary Ewoniuk
Communication 1020
Debbie Corsino-Martin
4/19/2014
Self-Evaluation Paper
Appearance
For my Informative Speech I was wearing a flannel shirt, opened, and had a t-shirt on
underneath meant to promote what I was informing people about but it just ended up being
covered up and looked a little unprofessional. For my persuasive essay I wore a green flannel
shirt and buttoned it up all the way in order to look more professional. Between the two I have
seen improvement in my latter speech with the shirt being buttoned up completely because I
appear more professional. My hair is always professional looking and clean cut and my posture
also looks upright and confident.
Organizational Pattern
This is one of my biggest weaknesses. I get a little worked up before the speech and can’t
remember what I had planned out before I came to class. I see the words on the screen or on my
outline and I use them to stimulate knowledge that I have on the subject. When I have presented
it is almost like I research the subject beforehand and then do an impromptu speech. I seem
unprepared and looking from the outside in I would think I didn’t rehearse my speech at all, but I
since it is me evaluating my own speech I know I just get over-the-top nervous. I also have
trouble with citing my sources during the speech. Not that I just have trouble doing it, I do not do
it at all. My flow is a little shaky at first, then steadies out a bit but there is still plenty of room to
improve. My transitions are also rocky because it is just me spilling out information after
information without relentlessness. My supporting material on the other hand is top notch, it
comes from good sources, as seen at the bottom of my slides, but again I have trouble citing it
during my information overload. My conclusions do come quite suddenly and a little rough, I
could improve this by stating “In conclusion” or another phrase that tells my audience that my
speech is over.
Vocal Qualities
When it comes to my vocal qualities, such as pitch, pause, fillers, projection, and
variation I am dull. I get bored listening to my own presentation. I have little to no pitch, I pause
often but out of nervousness, my fillers are over apparent, projection is actually really good, but
no variation in what I am saying. I am a very dry speaker. I need to improve drastically in the
way I present my voice. It might be the microphone in my phone not doing me justice, but I still
sound dull and boring to listen to.
Delivery
My delivery is impressive compared to my vocal qualities. I keep exquisite eye contact
with my audience and look away to only keep track of where I am from my power point or my
outline. My body movement looks relaxed in both my speeches and my hand gestures keep the
audience interested. I am impressed with my delivery, yet I can improve based off of my
informative speech with my body movement, it was a little too relaxed and unprofessional. In my
persuasive essay my body movement was more professional and had improved tremendously.
Visual Aid
In both of my presentations I had a power point presentation. In my informative speech I
had one slide that was black with five pictures on it. I thought it was an appropriate amount of
pictures but the issue with the projector and the classroom was having a dark background made it
difficult to make out what the images were. I fixed this problem when presenting for my
persuasive speech by using a white background and brighter pictures so that they were easier to
see. It was a great improvement compared to my informative speech’s power point.
Audience Connection
In my introduction in both of my speeches I acknowledge the audience by asking how
involved in the topic they are in. It is a good way to start a topic and also get a feel on how much
everyone knows already. One of my strong points of rhetoric is my ability to bring out heavy
doses of pathos, or emotion, and lay it out on my audience. I make them think of the people that I
am talking about and let them know what it would feel like if they were in the situation of the
people in subject. I am not as strong in the area of ethos. In my speeches I address issues with
war breaking out and doctor assisted suicide, so my two largest sources of ethos was the
president of Ukraine and doctors in general. They were only slightly mentioned and mostly just
to mention them as tools to the people in need or rebellion. For my logos, I used it but usually
only to invoke ethos in people. My logos were used to bring out numbers of deaths, whether it
was by murder of Ukrainian peace keepers or natural occurring deaths in Washington.
Strengths
My strongest areas are the way I deliver my speeches, my visual aid, my audience
connection, and appearance. I feel like my strongest is my delivery. In the delivery section all
three areas of delivery (gestures, body movement, and eye contact) I am strong in and only need
to fix a few things to improve in this area. While my Visual aid, audience connection, and
appearance are all strong as well, these either need more improvement, like my visual aid and my
audience connection, or it is just not as important as delivery, like my appearance. Where
appearance is important, it is also easy to acquire and improve on, where delivery is something
that people have a harder time with and need to practice more dramatically with delivery, so that
is my reasoning to why my delivery is my best quality. Not only am I the most comfortable with
it but also it is a hard skill to acquire.
Areas to Improve
I can improve in all the areas. There is always room for improvement and that is
something I strongly believe in. Anyways, my biggest areas for improvement would be my
organizational pattern and vocal qualities. For my organizational patterns my introductions are
strong and my supporting material is strong, but my conclusion, signposts, transitions, flow, and
word choice are all lacking in quality. I can improve in these areas by practicing my speeches
more intensely beforehand so that there is no amount of nervousness that could interfere with my
speech. I especially want to increase my performance when it comes to flow and word choice.
These two seem very important and would help strengthen my speeches the most. They are like
the frosting to a cake in a way and are the substances that entice an audience.
For my vocal qualities I said that I was dry, dull, and boring. I still strongly agree with
that statement. I need to increase my pitch and variation while decreasing my fillers. Practicing
relentlessly before my speech could help decrease my fillers because I’ll be more confident in
what I am saying. I do not know how to increase my pitch and my variation. Hopefully, those
will come with practice and from me being more confident in what I am telling my audience.
In all the other categories I can improve by doing minor things. For example, in audience
connection, I am strong at using ethos, but I can improve in this area by improving my ethos and
logos. There is still room for improvement in appearance, delivery, visual aid, and audience
connection even though they are my stronger areas. I can improve with minor things that will
actually help make a larger impact on my speech. Overall, the best way for me to improve in my
public speaking is practice, practice, and more practice. At the same time making sure that what I
am practicing is actually helping me improve. There is no point in practicing if I am not trying
new things that would make me better at speaking.