Reflection on Oral Presentation

Presenting to a large group of audience has never been an easy job for most people, and I’m no exception to it. Ever since I was young, I would always panic and get all tensed up when all eyes are placed on me. I would also stutter and it resulted in me not being able to convey my message across clearly to the audience.

During the peer teaching and mock oral presentation, several feedback that I received was insufficient eye contact, limited gesture and the tendency to end my sentence with a higher note. As such, while practicing for my oral presentation, I paid extra attention to these points to make sure that I do not make such mistakes again during the actual presentation.

In the past, I would always memorize my script by heart as I was afraid that I might forget my points during the actual presentation. I would also always hold a copy of my full script. However, after the past few assessments, I realized that memorizing my script by heart could be the main reason for the lack of eye contact. As I try to recall every word of my script, my eyes tend to roll upwards which then makes it difficult for me to make constant eye contact with the audience.

Holding a hard copy of my script also restricts my hand gestures. Therefore for this presentation, I have decided not to hold any script and not to memorize any script by heart. Instead of memorizing, I kept practicing my presentation with the slides concurrently. I also made it a point to not look at my slides unless if necessary, for example, when transiting between slides. I feel that this have helped in reducing my reliance on the slides and I was able to have more eye contact with the audience. I also made it a point to vary my intonation. For example, when asking a question, I tend to end of my sentence with a higher note and when affirming a point, I end my sentence with a lower note.

Although there is more room for improvement for my final performance during the actual presentation, I am glad that my practices paid off well. With sufficient practices, I realized that I was able to hide my fear from the audience and calmly bring across the message that I want to convey. Without the restriction of holding a script, I was able to present myself better with more gestures too.

This presentation was a good experience for me and I will practice more to improve my presentation skills further.