Speech Reflection Paper

Every student should take a speech class sometime throughout their schooling. Though I’ve only had speech class for a short time, I have learned so many basic foundations on how to create and deliver a speech, and through this paper I will be sharing the tools that I have learned from Beebe’s A Concise Public Speaking Handbook, and used within making my informative speech. These tools include considering the audience, selecting and narrowing down a topic, determining my specific purpose, developing my central idea/thesis statement, generating main ideas, gathering supporting material and organizing my material in an outline. More tools that I used include developing the introduction, body and conclusion, and creating a clear visual aid to rehearse with. For my first point, I will talk about how I considered the audience when first preparing my speech. The first thing I did before preparing my informative speech was to consider the audience. According to the text, while preparing a speech you should always consider the audience because they influence what topic you choose, what material you do or don’t include and how you organize and deliver your speech (17). When I was choosing between the list of topics that I had generated, I asked myself three questions from the text; Who is the

According to the text, your visual presentation aids should be easy to see and simple for your audience to read and understand (180). I choose a PowerPoint for my visual aid, and used a large clear font within my slides. On my slides, I avoided writing most of my speech on my slides by only writing the main ideas and very basic supporting material. Also, I used a few pictures on my slides that support the main ideas. Once my visual aid was complete, I practiced using it while delivering my speech, like the text says, so I would feel at ease with it while giving my speech