Mika

January 14, 2009 Self Assessment – Book Talk Speech "Where the Red Fern Grows" //Word Count: 434// In this assessment, I will be assessing my speech I gave on Tuesday of January 10, 2009. In this speech, my job was to persuade my chosen audience; “Animal Lovers”, not to read the book “Where the Red Fern Grows”. This book was my second and final outside reading book for ninth grade. To be honest, I was not a big fan of this book. When I read, I normally like to read books about the lives of girls my age. The book “Where the Red Fern Grows” was about a young boy named Billy who had always dreamed of having two hunting dogs. One day when he went down by the water bank, he found a fishing magazine with an ad for dogs. Since that day, Billy worked his butt off to make fifty dollars so he could buy two hunting dogs. He has two dogs named Little Ann, and Old Dan. He enters his dogs in coon hunting tournaments, and in the end, he loses both of his dogs in a tragic accident. Even though only one of the dogs die from the accident, the other one is scarred for life, because it can not live without the other. The speech I gave was mediocre. I feel that this was my worst speech ever. There is probably only one thing that I have improved on in this speech compared to my others, which is my fidgeting. I was not as fidgety during this speech. I moved occasionally, but it was not a constant movement. A few things I could improve on are, creating a better hook for my introduction and making the time limit. The hooks I always use for my introductions are never exciting. I need to figure out a way to lure the audience into my speech more. The other thing is making the time limit. When I rehearsed my speech the night before, I remember constantly making the time limit at a little bit over five minutes. While I was presenting my speech, I started to speed up, and I forgot to mention a couple key parts for my speech. This caused the length of my speech to be under four minutes. One last thing I could have worked on is preparing more. When I went up to present my speech, it was obvious that I was not prepared. Now I know to prepare more than six times

Overall I would have to give myself maybe an 80. I would actually be pleased to have gotten an 80. Hopefully I will improve on those topics on my next speech.

September 22, 2009 “Poetry Out Loud” Self Assesment #2

In my opinion, I feel I did worse on this speech compared to my last speech. As I went up in front of the class and started to read my introduction, my mind went blank. I started to forget words and I skipped a couple of lines from my introduction. I hope this doesn't affect my grade too badly. I definitely need to work on not getting too nervous before I give a speech and to get comfortable in front of my classmates. I also need to work on the pace of my voice. When I am nervous I tend to speed up when I am talking because I try to get it over with as soon as possible. In addition, I need to improve on giving eye contact with my audience and creating a more interesting hook to get their attention even more! There were some parts where I did a pretty good job. When I was reading my poem, I felt that I was reading it with the right emotion. The tone I had was kind of serious but fun. There are way more things I need to improve on then what I actually did a good job on. On the next speech, I will try to reverse this so it is vice versa, so I will have more good feedback rather than things I need to improve on. Overall, the speech I gave was not too bad. My tone fit with the emotion, but I still have to work on not speeding up during my speech. I am hoping to do a better job on my next speech!

October 17, 2009 Word count: 470//**
 * //"My Poem- Hunger" Self Assessment

In this self assessment, I will be assessing my positive and negative impacts of the speech I gave on October 15, 2009. In this speech, I read an introduction that I memorized and a poem I wrote on my own.

In my opinion, I think I have improved on this speech compared to my last speech. This speech was the best so far. :) I was not too afraid to do whatever during my speech and my confidence rose which also showed in the volume of my voice which was a bit louder than usual. I was not nervous and I performed good. I just forgot all my worries, just like what I do during a tennis match. I was more free, and not as tight as I normally am when I give my speeches. I realized that I was nervous before I gave my speech, but as I got in the zone and started giving my speech, it just kind of flowed. I also believe I did a better job with some hand movements such as when I grabbed my stomach when I was talking about people's stomachs grumbling. I also showed the movement "food falling from the sky." Another thing I did good on was giving the audience eye contact. While watching my speech, I noticed that I am always smiling from cheek to cheek. I am not exactly sure if that is a good thing, but i noticed that in this speech and not in my other speeches.

A couple things i need to work on is preparing my introduction more, and not laughing during my speech. Before my speech I was very nervous and I believe that affected my introduction. I made one big and funny mistake when I said "from the kids in Africa" and I accidently pointed at Molly, and my plan was to just point at someone random, and that might have been a mistake. That caused me to laugh, and lose focus, but as I went on, I started to gain my focus again. I also noticed I tend to move my feet a lot. I guess I could say I am improving on my fidgeting little by little, but I believe this movement fit with the topic of my poem which was hunger. It fit because when you are hungry, you tend to be impatient and this causes you to move around a lot.

Overall, I feel like I have improved a lot compared to my last couple speeches, but I have to admit, after I gave my speech I was very relieved to be done with it. I believe I deserve a B or a B+, but I am hoping that you enjoyed my speech even more. I am hoping to improve even more on the speeches in the future.

"Prose Passage - The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold" Word Count: 381
 * //October 23, 2009

In this self assessment, I will be assessing my fourth speech I believe. This speech was four minutes and forty - five seconds which made the time limit. This was the longest speech I have ever given, and yet I feel this was my best speech during this first quarter. I had to create, memorize, and perform an introduction to my fellow classmates, and then act out a passage from my book __The Lovely Bones__ //// by Alice Sebold. This was the book I chose to read as my first outside reading book.

As I said in my last self assessment, about how I am slowly improving, I believe this still applies. This speech was way better than my last one because I had more hand motions and I had memorized my introduction a bit better. Usually before I present my speech I freak out before I hear a click sound that my teacher makes when she presses the record button on her camera, but this did not occur this time. I was more calm. I believe being calmed helped me because I was able to concentrate more. During this speech, I was fully concentrated on the people around me and I did not laugh in the middle of this speech unlike my last one. One of the best movements I did was when Susie's mother had fallen to the ground on her knees, which is exactly what I did.

There are always positives and negatives to a presentation. In this speech, I think I still need to improve on making a better hook in my introduction so everyone will stay with me during my speech. I guess there can never be too much hand movements in a speech. I hope to include more hand movements and emotion in my next speech.

At the beginning of this quarter, I was super scared to be giving speeches. I am normally a loud and outgoing person but when it comes to presentation a wall goes up and blocks off my true personality. I feel that this quarter, the wall has slowly been going down. I hope to keep improving on my speeches and to get an A on my next one! I believe I deserve a B+ on this speech ;)

//**Hands only speech "How to serve a tennis ball" October 29, 2009 (P.S. Sorry it is kind of late :(

In this self assessment I will be assessing my hands only speech. This speech was supposed to be a minute and half to two and a half minutes. My time was about one minute ad forty-five seconds. I was glad to have reached the time limit. This was the shortest speech I have given this year. This was probably my second to best speech that I have given this whole year. For this speech we had to chose an action to present to the class. We had to use hand motions and explain how to do something. I chose the topic how to serve a tennis ball, since tennis is my sport I thought this would be a good choice.

Once again, I feel I am still improving, especially since there is always room for improvement. I feel I did a great job showing hand movements which helped the audience go along with how to serve a ball. This was a lot more movements during a speech than what I am used to. I feel I was a little more open to showing hand movements. During this speech, I did not start cracking up laughing like one of my other speeches. This is a huge improvement for me because I am normally such a silly person, and it is hard for me to concentrate and go for a long period of time without laughing or smiling.

Overall, my speeches are getting better but there is always room for improvement. Such as, making sure I do not repeat myself too many times. Even though this may be seen as being affirmative and making sure the audience gets the key points, it is not always god to repeat yourself several times. I also could improve on speaking up a little louder, and remembering my introduction. I blanked out a little bit but I memorized it better than my last speech.

December 5, 2009 (20 more days until Christmas)

Culture: What makes me //me? - Traveling in ME Word Count: 431//

In this assessment I will be critiquing my performance on my “Culture: What makes me ME” speech. The purpose of this speech was to share a speech to my classmates about the key ingredients that me who I am today. We had to choose three elements of our life that represented us, and has influenced us. My main topic was “Traveling in Me”. The elements I chose to branch off of this topic was my three most memorable trips which were to Japan, New York, and Germany. There is always room for improvement, and that is what I will be assessing in this assessment.

The delivery of my speech was a bit bad. I feel I did a bad job with standing still. I was focused too much on the slideshows that I forgot to concentrate on what my body was doing, which was fidgeting. I am normally a very “Move-y” kind of person because I can never stay still. This is one of my main goals to work on during this year. I feel the volume and articulation of my voice was pretty good though, because it was clearly understandable. I also made eye contact with several of the people in the audience. All in all, posture and stance is one of the main things I need to work on.

For this speech, I chose traveling because ever since I was a little girl it was a big part of my life. If I never travelled to all the interesting places that I have been, I would be a totally different person. I remember as a little girl, I travelled a lot, and I became United’s youngest executive flier. To me, travelling was a good choice for me.

Giving this speech, made me really think about the places I’ve been and what they made of me. Such as how New York impacted my life. The way people live theirs lives there is amazing and how they manage to go through the day when its super fast. I love that super fast feeling, compared to the slowness of Hawaii.

Overall, this speech was okay to me. I need to improve on my poise. I am always too fidgety during speeches. I am glad I made the time limit unlike my previous speech. I think I would give myself a B on this speech. One obstacle I faced was going third, which I should be thankful not to be first, but also being nervous before my speech. As a performer, I gained not only an insight of me, but other people too.

Mika Geringer English Period 8 December 16, 2009 (8 days until Christmas!) Impromptu Speech #1 Self Evaluation In this evaluation, I will be assessing my most recent performance. In this speech, we were given a random topic a couple minutes before we actually gave the speech. We all had to think on our toes and present a successful speech. The time frame of this speech was from two to three minutes. I presented my speech today during my English class. To begin, this was probably one of the more fun speeches compared to our others ones. Normally you would think it would be the speech every student would dread, because thinking on your toes is not an easy skill for everyone, but this was very fun. Mainly because the things everyone talked was funny. It is amazing to see the things people think of when they have nothing else to say. This speech brought out the non-serious in all of us. One thing I need to work on is my quick thinking. During my impromptu speech, I ran out of things to say. I just had to start making things up at the top of my head and hope that it makes sense. Improvising is an important skill because we use it in our everyday lives. In addition, I am slowly improving on my stance. I think in this speech my stance was okay, but I moved around to show shorts that were “in dress code.” This is probably my main struggle. I need to nail my feet to the ground for my next speech. Also, I have improved on my timing. My speech was two minutes and sixteen seconds which means I made the time limit. This is a big improvement for me because in my previous speeches, I was under the minimum time. While I was giving my speech, I was very nervous about the time. I was worried that I would run out of things to say because I did not plan my speech very well. In conclusion, I feel the impromptu speech was pretty fun. It was fun to watch my other classmates because they showed us their silly side compared to their serious. Compared to my other speeches, there are certain things I have improved on. Such as, making the time limit and less fidgeting, but also things I could work on such as my quick thinking. That is a very good still to have with you because you use it all the time. I would give myself a B because I feel did I pretty good and I met the time limit. I hope to improve on my next speech.

Mika Geringer English Period 8 March 14, 2010 //Group Speech – Self Evaluation// In this evaluation I will be assessing mainly myself and my partner and I as a whole. My partner was Kylie and we presented our speech on //Beauty and Body Image//. In this speech we compared beauty in the Elizabethan Era and the 21st Century. Overall our speech was decent but I feel with more preparation our speech could have been a lot better. First, I need to rehearse more often. Since Kylie was absent the day before, we did not get a chance to rehearse as much but that was mainly our faults. Also, I should have taken more time out to memorize my conclusion. I had it memorized but when we got to the ending of the speech I completely blanked out. Another thing I need to improve on were my hand motions. Occasionally I had motions pointing certain pictures out, but I feel there were not too many things in our speech that would go with motions. Even though there are several things I need to improve on, I feel that I have greatly improved my stance. I do not sway as often anymore. I made sure not to sway while my partner was talking or else it would have distracted the audience. My voice sounds a bit more confident since I do not get as nervous for my speeches. My partner and I chose the topic //Beauty and Body Image// because it was something we were both interested in such as fashion. I think our topic choice was okay because it did not give us as much information as we hoped. This speech gave me an insight on how Beauty was portrayed in the Elizabethan Era. We were able to compare and contrast the differences. I also learned to always double check to make sure your video on your presentation works because if it does not then it can mess everything up. Overall this speech was decent. This speech was one of the more fun speeches because we were able to work with a partner. Working with a partner is a lot less nerve racking because there is always someone by your side. I have improved on my poise but there always can be room for improvement. For this speech I would give my partner and I a solid B. I hope you enjoyed the speech and give us more partner speeches!

Speech Assessment: Call to Arms Part 1

In this assessment I will be assessing the speech I gave on Eating Disorders. I gave this speech on Thursday of April 15, 2010. For this speech we all had to choose a social issue that we were interested in learning about. I chose eating disorders because I studied it back in grade school and I wanted to learn more about it since it has become much more of a serious issue. Many people are affected by it each year. I will be critiquing the delivery of my speech. Personally I feel that this was my best speech all year. I think it was because I was able to choose my own topic and it was an informative speech rather than an evaluative speech. I am a lot more comfortable with informative speeches, and I was a lot more prepared for this speech in particular. I think the pace of my speech was consistent so I didn't really slow down or speed up. Even though I had to stall for ten seconds in the end, I think the stalling was not too obvious and it kept on topic rather than branching off in a different direction. My voice sounded very serious and the volume was pretty good. Also, my poise was excellent! I have improved on my stance and not swaying my legs. My legs were planted to the ground and I was concentrated on giving eye contact and giving an excellent speech. Even though I feel this was my best speech, there is always room for improvement. I continuously need to work on making the time limit. When I rehearsed my speech the night before it made five minutes and ten seconds. I was very worried that I was going to be under time, which I almost was. I had to stall to make the time limit, which is not exactly very good. For my final, I am planning to make sure my speech is at least thirty seconds over the minimum just in case I speed up. Throughout the research and delivery of this speech I have learned many things. One, I learned that if I actually practice I can deliver a decent speech. I also learned many interesting facts about anorexia and bulimia nervosa, which are the top eating disorders. Overall, this was the best speech I have given all year long! I hope to deliver a much better speech for my final exam. I would give myself a B+ for this speech.