Most helpful concept(s)

When it comes to considering what helped me the most in the class, it's hard to narrow it down. In the beginning, I thought the hardest part was the culture speech. Having progressed through the course, I can look back at it and realize that the culture speech was a piece of cake. Having done several speeches in the class, I have learned that the 2 concepts that help me the most were proper preparation and practicing a whole bunch. Of those two, the practice part was the most helpful. On pages 242-244, the book provides some simple suggestions that really worked for me. I would start by practicing my speech in parts, Then , once I got those down, I would move to practicing the whole speech at once. This became very time consuming. However, this over practicing compensated for my fear of public speaking. It helped build my confidence. It may not have showed in my speeches since I was unable to watch my speech at the same time, but I did feel more comfortable up in front of my audience. On the inside though, I was still quite unnerved by my own internal fears. With that said, I also felt that my preparation, and at times, my over preparation, helped my confidence by allowing me to learn things about my topic  I would have otherwise not known. So, my advice to anyone else who has to make a speech and who has not taken this class or any other public speaking class, would be to prepare and practice, practice, practice.

What I will take away from this class

What I will take away from this class for future endeavors is that preparation and practice are extremely important. I found that preparation is important for researching your topic and getting all the information together and organize it in a way that makes sense. I found that I spent a lot of time over preparing and over researching my topics. This led to a lot of wasted time because I found myself going off into areas that either did not pertain to my original concept but it also led to an over production of information that would typically put my speech over on time. This led to spending additional time being spent at working the speech down and triaging out information in order to meet the time requirements. This class allowed me to practice this process a lot. I'm able to streamline and focus my research work more efficiently. The other concept I'm taking away from this is the practice part. I've given a few speeches in the past and I had never practiced my speech before hand. This was key for me. I'm not real comfortable speaking in front of people but I found that the more I practiced my speech, the more comfortable I was speaking in front of the class. So, I'm guessing my fear is confidence related. Practicing my speech more and efficient preparation time seem to be the most important things I will take away from this class for my future endeavors.