My PRCA-24 Class

Throughout the semester I was aware I was learning things, but it wasn’t until watching my IDEA speech that I realized how much I had truly learned. I thought that maybe I had picked up a few useful tips, but I didn’t think that I had really changed much as a speaker. It turns out I was dead wrong. I have clearly learned a tremendous amount. This shows in my improvement from the first speech, as well the drastic change in my PRCA-24 score. When I took the PRCA-24 for the first time at the beginning of the semester I scored a 64, which didn’t surprise me at all. Having moderate speech anxiety seemed to ring pretty true to me as a speaker. When I took the PRCA-24 again, however, I was surprised. I received a score of 47, which means that throughout the semester my speech anxiety has dropped from moderate anxiety to low anxiety. At first I was shocked by this, going from a 64 to a 47 is huge, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. I
Watching ones self speak is never exactly fun. Once again, however, I was pleasantly surprised. This time I was even happier with how I had done then I was with my first speech. I could tell with the IDEA speech that I was more calm. I wasn’t making as many nervous movements, as I did with with Grab Bag speech. I feel like my delivery was much better. While I need to continue to learn to slow down and speak more like I would in real life, my delivery was much more clear. This has a lot to do with not being as nervous. I know that I have a tendency to speak quickly, and I need to work on not sounding like I am reading from my note cards. I do feel like having note cards with me, tends to make my speeches worse. I need to learn to not rely on them as much. This is something I will continue to work on. I still have a tendency to use verbal fillers, however, I noticed them much less in this speech then I did in my Grab Bag