Reflection on Oral Presentation

I know I speak fast, but I never knew I speak THAT fast until I saw the video of our mock presentation. Fortunately (or unfortunately for some people), that is not the fastest I can go. Anyway, my point being, we can never truly "SEE/HEAR" ourselves until we record it down. Thus, I'm really glad I took this module which gave me this opportunity to record our oral presentation on video.

I actually realised that I spoke a tad too fast during our mock presentation immediately after I finished presenting. I think that probably happened because I was a little nervous. Thus, during the preparation for the actual presentation, I practised speaking slowly and have longer pauses. I also kept reminding myself to speak slower during the actual presentation.

Besides the speed of my speech, I noticed from the video of our mock presentation that my fringe was actually damn irritating because it made me keep doing the “Bieber-swish”. My hair was also pretty untidy (in my opinion) with all my baby hair jutting out. I never noticed these little things because they look fine when I’m just conversing normally with friends or even on still pictures, but it is not the case when I have to give a presentation. Little gestures like these can be distracting, thus I decided to pin up my hair neatly for the actual presentation and also avoid having to look down at my cue cards, so my fringe won’t fall down. I also noticed that I tend to read from my cue cards although I did make a conscientious effort to make eye contact with the audience. But the head moving up and down up and down is still pretty distracting in my opinion. Therefore I made sure I know my content very well for the actual presentation so that I can diminish my reliance on my cue cards.

Overall, I think we did well as a team and I have to thank Team Jabe Joca, for having such wonderful people that I can work closely and effectively with. It is only because of our good team dynamic that made me comfortable and relaxed to perform well. Not forgetting also, the comments and remarks from Dr Jaidev and our fellow classmates that help shape what I am or we are today.
Finally, the most important thing I learnt about presentation is - PREPARATION & PRACTICE. Although some people may disagree, because they say too much preparation will kill the creativity. However, I must say preparation does not kill creativity, memorisation does. Though this might not be true for everyone because everyone works differently. At least for me, I realised typing the script out before writing the cue cards helped me to know my content better, thus it is easier for me to generate the points and form proper sentence during presentation. Last but definitely not least is to practise to make sure I know the flow of my presentation and my content.