Molly

10/18/09

OI # 3 self assessment

In this assessment, I’ll be explaining how I thought I did on our third oral interpretation, and compare it to the others, which I have done. In this interpretation, I was performing a self-written poem, and used an introduction, which had to be memorized. This is our third oral interpretation! Huzzah! I thought that I did much better this time, than any of my earlier interpretations. I’m happy about my performance, because I feel like over the past three, it has steadily improved. I’m sure that you might have noticed that my introduction wasn’t word for word. I got up on stage (stage being the open area in front of the rest of the class) and I forgot the words to my introduction. AHHHH. However, my beginning theatre skills came in handy, and I was able to improvise, and succeeded in getting the overall point of my introduction over to the audience. After watching the introduction back on my computer, I thought I did well, and that it ran smoothly altogether. I’m hoping that I don’t get too many points taken off for my lack of memorizing because I thought it worked out fine, and I am almost 99.9385% positive that I heard Mrs. Stew laugh, where I was hoping to be funny. I’ve never had much trouble with the “delivery” of my performance, because that’s always come naturally to me. I was able to maintain eye contact with the audience. I spoke clearly, my back was straight, I wasn’t hunched over like a hundred year old woman, and my rate of speech was easy, and didn’t feel rushed, or too slow. I also thought that my volume was good. I wasn’t yelling, and the audience didn’t need to lean over their desk, trying to make out the words I was saying. The thing that I felt I improved on the most was my hand gestures. That’s always what was missing when I performed, and it usually always hurt me grade wise. I’m not sure why I’ve always had trouble with hand gestures. I think that it’s because I focus more on my delivery of the piece than anything else. I always try to make sure I’m looking at everyone, instead of zeroing in on my friends, which would be easier. However when I perform I try to pretend that I’m not even performing in front of an audience. Overall, I’m very happy with the way my performance went, and I think it’s my best one so far. I’m really hoping that I get an A-, or a B+, depending on how my evaluation went. I’m proud of my performance, and am strangely looking forward to the next one on the agenda.

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Poem reading self-assessment

Last week I performed the poem “Dancers Exercising” written by Amy Clampitt. I thought that all in all, my performance was…okay. I think that I could have done much better than I did. I think that my performance was good in a technical way, however it lacked the proper poetry “feeling”. There were a lot of things I thought that I did well during my performance. Some of these things were, eye contact, poise, volume, and rate of speech. During my performance, thought there were times when I stumbled, and had to re-say my words, it didn’t happen often. Even though I looked down at my paper, I kept good eye contact with the audience, and I did a very good job of preventing my hands from shaking. I think that there were also times when I talked a bit to fast. This usually happened, after I missed a word, or had to re-start a sentence, however all in all I kept a good rate, and it was easy to understand what I was saying. There were a lot of long words in my poem that were a bit hard to pronounce, such as “evanescence” and I found that it was times like that when I sped up, maybe to try to cover up if I said it wrong or not. In seventh grade, when I was in theatre, my teacher, Ms. Jones, was very insistent that I put my hair in a ponytail whenever I give a performance, because I have a bad habit of touching it, or fixing it while I talk. That was one of the things that I really need to improve on. I realized that small, little motions, like fixing your hair, playing with you shirt, or shorts, really does distract the audience form your performance. Next time I’ll be sure to put my hair up, before I perform. Another thing that I really have to fix, would be my hand gestures, and movement. I really didn’t move at all. Next time, I’ll put some notes in my manuscript that tell me when to move and what to do. Although I had good eue contact throughout my performance, and there were only a few minor slip ups, I looked down at my paper a bit too much. I realize now that the manuscript is really only for when you forget your line, and it should be mostly memorized. I think that I agree with the grade I got. If I were to grade myself, I would have given myself a B, because I know that I can do better.

__Self Assesment (inspirational speech)__ As I was watching my inspirational speech, I found that it lacked any inspiration. At the very end of my speech, I remembered that this was actually an inspirational speech, and so I said something like “keep your heads up, and remember the good things instead of the bad”. Blah. I sincerely apologize for not coming up with anything on the spot less clichéd, and, well let’s face it, sounding stupid. I think that this was one of my worst speeches. I felt that I got a bit too emotional, and I ended up hurting my overall speech. Because of the few breaks I had to take, to “gather myself” I ended up with almost a minute and a half over the time limit of the speech. I think that I also started to ramble a little bit at the end. When I had prepared my speech in the outline, there wasn’t any mention of what happened during our 6th grade graduation (where Mandy fainted) that was completely improvised, and had absolutely no point whatsoever. I think that if I had read my speech out loud more than I did to prepare, I wouldn’t have gone off track like that. When I read the speech in my room in front of a mirror, I didn’t start tearing up. That only happened for you wonderful people. I’m sure that I made more than one person feel a little uncomfortable. As my presentation is concerned, I felt I did an okay job. My voice wasn’t soft from being too far away from the microphone, and there weren’t any echo sounds. I’ve used a microphone before, so this wasn’t really any trouble. In my previous speeches, I never had too much trouble with shifting around, so the stand in front of me didn’t make a whole lot of a difference. However, it was nice being able to leave my papers on the stand in front of me. I think that it was fun being able to perform in the chapel. We never got to use a microphone yet for our English class, and I truly enjoyed watching people adjust the microphone to their height. (Ben following Courtney. So hilarious) I think that through this speech we all learned a great deal about eachother. Maybe some things that we didn’t even want to know. I think as a class, those speeches made us closer friends, and stronger human beings (I say, trying my very best not to sound at all clichéd.)

Molly Browning P.8 1/12/10 __Self-Assessment (Book talk)__ Ugh! I realize that “ugh” is technically not used in the English dictionary, but that’s the only word I can think of to possibly describe my horrible speech. I’m not sure what made it so bad, but it seemed just as horrible watching it, as it did actually performing it. I think that it might have something to do with the fact of how nervous I was because I wanted to do really well, since this was the last speech of the quarter. And semester. I think that altogether it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done. It just seems that way to me, because I’m the one who performed it, and has to watch herself bobbling around at the center of the room. I was very frustrated with the fact that I practiced so much, and I couldn’t pull out the introduction I had worked so hard on. Seriously Ms. Stew. I promise that I practiced my introduction. The way I planned it out, I used really cool words, such as “swirled”, and “intrigue.” You would have been impressed. But now you can’t because I forgot! Delivery wise, I had good volume. You could just about always hear me. There were times when I had to repeat a word. I got really messed up whenever I had to say Jaques Sauniere’s name. There’s something about saying something French, and being nervous, that just completely ruins speeches. While I was performing, I felt like I was stuttering, and that I had to pause a lot to get a hold of my thoughts. However, now that I watched the video a few times, I realize that it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be in the beginning. There were an obvious few pauses, but nothing like how I thought it would be like. Thank god! On thing that I wish I could have fixed in my content, was how I talked about Mary Magdalene. I totally forgot to mention that she was the Holy grail, in the middle of the speech, so I ended up sticking in somewhere towards the end of the speech. It make me wonder if people really understood what I was talking about because I, never went into perfect detail about the nature of the grail the Da Vinci code talked about. The other thing that I messed up on was that I never identified Da Vinci’s painting with the Holy Grail, as the last supper. All in all, it certainly wasn’t one of my best speeches. However, I do think that I deserved at least a B. Because I had many good points in my speech, my delivery wasn’t too shabby, and also because I fell in the correct time limit.