Reflective Essay On Oral Communication

Educators, politicians, and business managers, among others, seek to develop extraordinary speaking skills to assist them in climbing up the corporate ladder due to the abilities of presenting ideas clearly and persuasively. Employers value these important necessities for any job. As a business marketing major, by taking oral communications, I knew it would help boost my resume and increase my chances for success in the future. Although, coming into this class I was extremely hesitant about giving a speech in front of a college class. “What happens if I stumble? What do I do if I forget my speech? Will my professor make me memorize and give a 20 minute speech?” These were all thoughts that crossed my mind the first Tuesday, I had Oral Communications.

I had to inform my audience without persuading or convincing them that something is “good” or “bad.” It came time for my informative speech. This time my nerves were at a seven instead of an eight, feeling more relaxed and confident. Being educated about useful strategies like repetition, transitions, and signposts, helped make me feel more confident about the contexts of my speech. In addition, I felt my informative speech was more organized than my previous speeches. When it came down to presentation day, I knew I had written a well put together speech, but the question was, could I speak it as well as it was written? Afterwards, I felt a little uneasy because I relied upon my index cards too much. I was anxious to get my comments back to see if I had made at least one improvement. Again, I felt satisfied, but knew that wasn’t good enough, yet I was still enthusiastic to see that my hard work was paying off. “Take out a bit of content to help your time out a bit,” was something easy I improved on for my next speech. Being concise and confident were the two ideas I carried with me into the group

Over these last few months I never thought I would grow this much as a speaker, with my nerves, confidence, and content. Things like nonverbal communication like solid eye contact, appearance, and gestures are all important necessities that I had learned prior to this class, but I learned material like the seven parts of the communication process, for example encoding and decoding, are often thought about before a presentation. Taking this Oral Communications class will be professionally rewarding in my future as a Business Marketing, Management major. I believe this class has put me in the right path to fulfill leadership positions because of my confidence to speak in front of an