Oral Presentation Reflection

It’s been almost two years since I last gave a presentation. The biggest fears for me while presenting were forgetting my lines and stuttering. I am glad I managed to overcome these fears but still, I’m not very pleased with myself as I know that there are areas which I could have done better.

Moments leading up to the presentation, I was getting really nervous and my palms were getting really sweaty. Amazingly, I managed to suppress the feelings and proceed smoothly with the presentation.

During the presentation, I only presented to one side of the audience and completely forgo the other half. I might have let the other side of the audience felt left out and I was unaware of it. I was also told that I faced the screen too much. I guess I was oblivious to it and will bear this in mind to always maintain eye contact with the audience.

It was during the presentation that I felt that our group’s slides lacked visual representations. We were only trying to engage the audience with words and our speech which might not be very effective. This is one area I definitely will like to improve on for my future presentations, by adding more visual representations to better capture the audience's’ attention.

Also, having received feedback from my classmates and the professor, they have helped me identify what my shortcomings are. I will then be able to work on these shortcomings so that the same mistakes do not happen twice.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. Everyone feels nervous before a presentation but, we have to learn how to manage this feeling and not let it get in our way. I’m glad that this module gave us the opportunity to prepare us for the many more presentations that are coming our way.