I can see a big difference between the part I memorized and the part I tried to talk about based on key points. To me , good preparation requires memorizing that could also eased my tension, and it worked. However, when I tried to recall my next points or certain phrases, I tended to look up to the ceiling or down to the floor and I didn’t pay enough attention to my audience. However, speaking based on key points is the opposite: when I talked about the differences between writing in English and writing in Chinese, I wanted to make some change to my original points and you could tell that I were a little bit nervous: I made some grammatical mistakes and had some false starts.

I spoke quite fast in the beginning because I was worried that I might exceed the time limit. This is also why I failed to pause after I raised a question to my audience and after I finished some paragraphs, which makes me seem in a hurry. Some necessary pauses will make my speech more natural. My classmates, Veronica, also mentioned that I should make my conclusion more powerful. Apart from my volume and tone, I believe some proper pauses would help as well.

I was not used to making gestures. I compared my gestures and good speakers’ gestures, I found that their gestures are more powerful and mine are weak and sometimes unnecessary. Next time I will practice more on my gestures and control other body language.

Next time, I will speak more confidently and clearly, make firm eye contacts and proper gestures. I will keep working on speaking based on key points instead of memorizing every words, finding a balance between these two methods. I will also try to decrease the distracting “ah”, “um” and lip smacks.