Week 12 (Post #5) - Reflection on Oral Presentation

It has been 2 days since my oral presentation and during this time I’ve tried to identify what went right, what could be improved on and what went wrong.

I would say that preparing for this presentation was far from easy. This was mainly because there was so little time between the deadline for the final proposal and the oral presentation and yet, due to our packed and clashing schedules, the 3 of us were hardly able to meet. And it is a well known fact that no oral presentation can be perfected without practice. There was a constant dread within me – the lack of practice might pose as a hurdle to our actual presentation.

True enough, there were certain things that did not go according to plan due to the above fact. For example, I was not very used to the slides and therefore, I had to play it by ear and click. I tried listening to what Jia Lin was saying in order to click at the appropriate time. Though this worked at some points, it mostly turned out pretty messy. However, this situation (where we had to click for the other person) only arose because our wireless mouse refused to work beyond a certain distance from the computer. I suppose if the wireless mouse was functioning, the slide transitions would have been smoother. We should have considered bringing a backup mouse.

Now, moving on to my delivery itself. Although preparing for an oral presentation and delivering it is not new to me (thanks to practice in school and Project Work in JC), I always find myself nervous and jittery before every single one. This oral presentation was not an exception. Due to my nervousness, I felt that I may be spoken too fast at certain parts of the presentation and this may have inhibited my classmates from understanding what I was trying to convey.

Throughout most part of my schooling years, I always held cue cards containing whole chunks of my speech for most of my oral presentations. I realised that this made me incapable of speaking fluently because I became overly dependent on the cue cards. So, towards the end of my JC years, I tried to lose that habit by condensing my speech to points instead. This definitely worked better as I was able to face the audience more and at the same time speak without referring back to my cards all the time. I deployed the same method for this presentation. However, I wasn’t able to prepare as much for the final part of my delivery and therefore, I felt that I started faltering towards the end of my presentation. I guess I have to learn how to take hints from the points on the slides and think on my feet.

However, all this aside, I felt that I didn’t do too badly for the amount of practice that was done. And, I felt that the entire presentation went pretty well. So, I definitely have to thank my team members (: because the success of an oral presentation like this is based alot on the people you work with.

As much as I am relieved that the presentation is over, I have to say that it was definitely a good experience because it has pushed me to improve my delivery strategies. Hopefully, my presentation skills are a bit better than how they were 3 months ago.

On a final note, I know that I have to improve in a number of aspects when it comes to oral presentations. And I am most willing to learn – so if you have any suggestions at all, do let me know (: thanks!