Eye contact, checked. Gestures, checked. Clarify and good pace of speech, checked. Ability to remain composed in the midst of distractions, not checked.
Distractions were something that I was not prepared for. Having practiced in front of the mirror and my parents, I did not have any interruptions to worry about. Therefore distractions caught me off guard and affected my train of thoughts.
During my presentation, at my second point, there were two loud beeps coming from the direction of my classmates. The beeps reminded me of Ms. Lim’s instructions to give a signal at the 18th and 20th minute. With that idea, my thoughts became divided between the presentation and whether we went overtime. As the saying goes “A divided house cannot stand”, my divided thoughts gave me a hard time in presenting as I fumbled quite a bit. After a while, I managed to regain my composure by reassuring myself that since all the practices were done within 20 minutes and this round was no different. However, by then I was almost three quarters through my part.
Could I have done something during my preparation to advert away this disaster? Since the problems lies with my concentration, I need to train myself to concentrate and not be affected by distractions. A possible training method would be learning to concentrate in class and not allowing myself to daydream or let my thought wander about.
Putting aside the fumbling due to a distracted mind, I feel that I did reasonably well as I consciously ensure that my non-verbal cues are sufficiently present. In terms of PowerPoint slides creation, I have improved a lot from the peer-teaching. This time round, my slides were simple, concise and do not have unnecessary pictures. The black background was also particularly useful as I did not have to worry about being in the light of the projector.
All in all, even though I did not meet my expectation in terms of a calm, composed and professional delivery, I did identify a weakness that I never knew about before. Hence it was a good learning experience.
Hi Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteWell, I will like to first apologise as the beeps were from the laptop, which entered sleep mode after extended periods of inactivity.
I guess we were all quite engrossed at what you and your group were presenting that we forgot to keep the laptop active.
Nevertheless, from my perspective, you were able to maintain composure and thus presented extremely well.
I believe what we lack now is exposure and experience in a formal presentation situation. With the weakness you have identified for yourself and with more exposure, you will definately be able to deliver a stunning and effective presentation in the future!
Hey Berwyn!
ReplyDeleteIts ok. No need to apologise. I am glad at the beep did occur as it helped me identify my weakness in concentration.
Yes. I do agree with you that we lack exposure and experience in a formal presentation. Thus we should try to make use of every opportunity of presentation in NUS to sharpen our skills.
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your sharing. You'd always come across as a very self-aware student, and for your Oral Presentation, your description of your performance is no exception.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good presentation, no doubt, and you fulfilled a lot of the criteria in the rubric. But of course in real-life presentations audience aren’t given a rubric, so in a sense you can say that they assess presenters holistically which adds on to the challenge. With your acute sense of awareness, you already possess that ‘edge’ to do well; so make good use of your reflections to refine your future presentations.
In terms of delivery, you had a good formula. If you were to be more relaxed, smile a wee bit more, really look at the audience (and by that I meant really talking to them with your eyes) and not have a-tad-too-long-reference to the slides, you would have a winning formula.
All the best, Jonathan. I have no doubt you will become an effective presenter in no time!