Practicing Speeches: Critiques

Video Transcript

"Now, you've watched the whole tape. You have critiqued your performance. It is essential that you critique yourself in an honest, fair manner. That you're not too difficult on yourself, but that you're not too favorable for yourself as well. What you're going to do at this point, after assessing everything that we've talked about, is you're going to write down three to five things, preferably three, that you want to change about your performance. And then you're going to perform it again. Focus on changing those three things. Maybe you weren't enthusiastic enough; maybe you were rocking side to side; maybe your attention-getter wasn't strong enough. Get those things ready, practice it again, and you could do this a series of times, maybe you end up doing this two or three or four times, until you clear up, each time, two or three things that you want to do different. It's much easier to break it down into two or three changes, than to look at it in a global perspective and you're watching the tape or you're listening to the tape and you're thinking, "ok, that's just horrible." What's horrible about it? Pinpoint three things; practice again; change it. If you're still not happy with it, repeat the process. Just like it says on shampoo bottles: repeat as necessary. That's what you want to do when you're practicing your speech, and after you've practiced a few times, you'll be ready to give a great performance."