Jeffrey Du

IM 6-11AP
11/15/18

11/14/18 Oral Presentation Reflection

On November 14th, I gave a presentation to Mrs. Nichols’ 4A AP Psychology Class. I myself am part of

the class, so I was already familiar with nearly everyone. The classroom audience was predominantly

juniors, with only a few seniors and one sophomore (I think). Around 25 students were in attendance. My

presentation lasted just over 5 minutes, specifically 5 minutes and 8 seconds.

Generally, I thought that my presentation went relatively smoothly compared to the Smart

Speaking Presentations. In the Smart Speaking Presentations I received a lot of feedback saying that my

speaking was a little too fast and that I definitely need to cut some information out in order to present it in

a more coherent and understandable way. As a result, I decided that for this presentation I would leave out

some details about my research that I believed weren’t necessarily needed to convey the overall purpose

of my work. When I presented it, I made sure to slow down and talk in a more humanistic way,

interacting with the audience instead of plainly reading off my slides and just explaining my work. I also

decided to not explain everything I put on the slides and just generally explain the main ideas of my

points. Overall, I think that my audience generally understood the content and were interested in learning

more and potentially exploring the G/T program. However, Mrs. Nichols highlighted two things for me to

work on. The first thing is that it was apparent to her that I was still a bit nervous while presenting, which

I was. As a result, I did have a few filler words and sometimes stumbled over my words. The second was

that some of the pictures in my presentation were a bit small and thus not very readable to the general

audience. She mentioned that some of my infographics and statistics in the latter half of my presentation

were fine, because they were on separate slides all by themselves, but in the beginning, the pictures were
on slides with words were not large enough. I will make sure to slightly reduce the size of the words in

order to create more space for the images.

If I could redo this presentation, I probably would talk slightly louder and project a confident

aura, because I know that I’ve practiced my presentation many times and it shouldn’t be a struggle. I

would also probably make my hook a bit more interactive or entertaining, because while it made the

audience think, it was also not the most memorable. I should probably also explain the goals of my

research a bit better, because one of my friends later came up and asked for clarification

Throughout this process, I’ve seen myself develop from a relatively average speaker to a more

confident, relatable one. Since I debate, I usually try and talk as fast as possible, saying as much evidence

as I can fit in, while also trying to sound aggressive and knowledgeable. However, through this

experience, I’ve learned to interact more with my audience and actually talk reasonably in order to not

only inform them of what I’ve been doing in I/M, but also to try and convince them to follow suit.