Reflection on the presentations

Kevin Cabrera
In the past few weeks, all the presentations we viewed about public speaking were all very informative and I feel like I genuinely learned from not only researching and presenting the project for my group, but also just listening to the other presentations. We covered a wide variety of topics all within the scope of public speaking, and yet the information never felt repetitive or trite. Every presentation brought a new perspective, and each individual slide carried its own advice for how to most effectively deliver your points in public speaking.

Presentation 1:

The first presentation covered chapters one, two, three, and five, all under the title of “The important tricks for a great presentation”. The first part of the presentation covered the basics of understanding your crowd to create a better connection between you and your audience. The last thing you would want to do in a speech is to alienate your listeners, so some good tips for presenting were covered. Things like understanding your audience and what they want from you, to taking up a more conversational tone with the crowd, to even how you should implement technology. What really stuck out to me was the emphasis on how to relate to your crowd. Many people forget that they are speaking to actual people and not just a wall. By doing a bit of research on your audience, you can come up with ways to connect with them. I learned that common interests or struggles can really elevate your presentation for the audience since they feel heard and understand. The worst thing for your presentation to do is to isolate your crowd, making them feel unimportant. If they feel like this, there’s no reason for them to keep paying attention, and most will tune out. However, by building that relation with the audience, you can build a sense of greater intimacy between the listener and the points you’re making, heightening the chance that your audience will take the words to heart and truly use them in life. The rest of the presentation covered many important parts like how to work with your confidence, how to be an active listener, and how to adapt to different types of audiences. Out of all the topics covered in the first presentation, the ones that resonated with me most were how to better relate to your audience and how to adapt to a wide range of audiences.

Presentation 2:

The second presentation had chapters four, six, seven, and eight, this time covering the lead-up to your presentation and how you should prepare for it. Essentially, the whole presentation dealt with the intricacies of your topic and how you should best prepare for anything that may come. Being informed on your topic is an absolutely crucial part of an effective speech. After all, what good is a presentation going to be when you don’t even understand the very topic you’re speaking on? It is critical that you fully understand what you’re speaking about, as not only will this make you sound more confident, but it also allows you to give a genuinely deeper presentation compared to a barebones and very general presentation otherwise. Having depth in your knowledge and understanding of a topic is very important for speaking on it, especially if questions come into play. For this reason, I found this presentation to be very intriguing and personally found myself very invested in everything brought up. As well as this, I was able to relate to a lot of the comments they made due to personal experience. Many times have I been in class watching a presentation where the students presenting clearly have no knowledge of the very topic they’re speaking about. Any amount of scrutiny or questioning would tear the presentation apart. Furthermore, a lot of people may have a solid understanding of the presentation but not the actual ideas and they can’t handle questions. Because of this, I found the part of the presentation about supporting your ideas and researching them to be most critical. It is one thing to know your speech front and back, but if you can’t even answer a simple question on it, what’s the point? Because of that, I was captivated by this chapter because I could relate to it, like what was covered in the first presentation.

A graphic demonstrates the effectiveness of supporting your ideas with facts rather than inferences.

Presentation 3:

Due to the fact that I am in group three and we presented this, I will not speak as in depth for our presentation, but I will still give my impression. As a team, we covered chapters nine through twelve, all about getting closer to that great presentation. In the presentation, we covered how to use language and delivery effectively, how to use different media, and general advice for the beginning and end of the presentation. I covered how to use language, but I still learned from this presentation. Although the knowledge was not brand new since we had all given the chapters a read through, I still found the information on integrating media in particular very informative. As well as this, the part on delivery was especially relevant to me since I could connect it to my research on using language.

Presentation 4:

Last but certainly not least, group four covered chapters thirteen through seventeen, all about different presentations. This presentation was very interesting to me because while all the others covered techniques and concepts of how to give a proper presentation, this group covered the different types of presentations and for what situations they were best suited. I feel that this presentation was very fitting as the last one since it wrapped up everything nicely, bringing in a new topic while still calling back to past topics covered by other groups. For example, persuasive speaking brought up pieces of how to use your language, but also understanding your audience. Because of this, the last presentation felt like a fitting conclusion to all the projects we had seen. All the material was covered in a concise and effective way, allowing everything to be understood and referring back to the previous topics without bloating up or feeling like a re-hash of what had already been said. It felt like the group had really put together all the past concepts and applied them with full effectiveness.

In this example, group four effectively brings up points from the past topics and merges it with the new ones to demonstrate the importance of media use and graphic design on digital presentations.