Speaking Strengths and Weaknesses

Some of my past public speaking experiences come, obviously, from school presentations, being a lector at Church, and making announcements for sports teams and clubs.  One strength that I have is that I think I do not get too fidgety with my hands and body language during my presentations.  Another strength I have is that I have been told I have a good voice for making speeches, especially when I talk slowly.  This brings me to one of my potential weaknesses.  I think that occasionally I talk too quickly when I get nervous while giving a presentation.  Also, I think that I uses verbal fillers too often which certainly needs to be improved upon.  Instead of using verbal fillers, I am going to try to take pauses.  The larger problem here is that I need to be more confident and well rehearsed when giving presentations.  Depending on the type of presentation— whether the whole thing needs to be memorized or not— I will need to work on really studying my speeches in the future.  In my opinion, my last speech could have been improved if I was more familiar with the script.  I thought I knew it pretty well but I found myself relying on the notecards too much once I got about halfway through the presentation.  This could have been avoided if I had memorized the entire speech or if I had just written down several bullet points to keep me on track instead of the entire script.  I think that I can also improve my eye contact with the audience.  I believe that I am one of those people that is guilty of focusing in on one specific person too much during my speech.  This makes things awkward for that individual and it does not allow me to effectively connect with everyone in the room.