After you’ve successfully delivered your speech, a very important learning process begins as soon as you’re back in your seat. While you’re still in the heat of the moment, grab a pen and start jostling some notes. Begin by describing how you feel right now and how you felt while on stage. Were you nervous? Excited? Energised? How do you feel your speech delivery went against the following criteria:
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Memorisation of speech content. Was anything important missed out?
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Flow of the speech and smoothness of language.
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On the spot addition of improvisations.
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Body language & use of the stage
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Vocal variety
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Eye contact with audience members
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Achievement of purpose & audience reactions
Listen very carefully to the evaluation of your speech and write down everything your speech evaluator says so that you can review it later. Additionally, don’t forget to collect feedback slips from audience members. These provide additional points of view.
Set some quiet time aside to review everything. If you’ve asked for your speech to be videoed, watch it now and do your own critique and evaluation of your own speech. Don’t hesitate to be somewhat critical of your performance, but also recognise what you’ve done well which you could repeat in future speeches. It is amazing what impact videoing yourself can have, quite often you’ll realise that you’ve done a better job that what you expected. You may also pick-up things that your evaluator didn’t notice. Alternatively comments that weren’t obvious during the meeting might make more sense as you watch the video of your speech.
Register the key lessons from this speech, what you’ve done well and what needs to be improved. Incorporate these lessons in your next speech project. You may additionally wish to repeat this speech at a later date. Building upon the feedback received and repeating a speech can be a very worthwhile experience!