Self Reflection

Jacob Trettin Dr. Meehan April 28, 2005 Self Reflection When I think of my freshmen year in college certain things come to mind. The most important thing that I think of is my writing and communication skills. One class that helped me a great deal is Composition and Communication. The reason I think that class helped me is because I learned how too improve my thesis as well as my entire essays, also my process of how I write my essays, and how to give a effective speech. When I came to college one of my biggest fears was my writing skills.I knew my essays were never that great in high school and I feared that I was expected to have better writing skills then what I had at this point. Then I entered a class called composition and communication. Coming into this class at first I was nervous because I knew in was going to be heavy loaded in the writing area. Then we wrote are first essay about a musical performance on this essay I focused on my thesis because that was one of my goals go ing into this class to improve my thesis in my essays. I believe I was successful in my thesis for this paper. Over all I think this paper was my best out of all the essays we wrote for this class.On the next essay I really focused on my writing process I started with an outline then turned that into a pretty sketchy rough draft. I was a little skeptical at first about how it was going to turn out. Usually my rough drafts don’t really change a whole lot but that was not the case for this one. My final draft was a complete change it was like I wrote 2 different essays and picked the best one. I didn’t just change the essay I made it better and it just happened to completely change the essay. I soon realized that this process was a much improvement to my writing style and I decided to try it out on all my essays that I write.Another skill that I was definitely not born with is my ability to speak in front of a group. I will be the first to tell you that I am a horrible s peaker. With that said you can probably tell that I don’t have a lot of confidence in my speaking skills. This does not stop me from trying to improve in this area by any means. The first speech we gave in C and C class was quite frankly horrible. After this I decided I will improve little by little in my college career and the first step was to improve on the next speech that we will give in this C and C class.When I found out what are next speech was about I buckled down and came up with a magnificent plan of action. Although it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped I still believe I took a step in the right direction. There is definitely room for improvement however. All in All I believe that my experience with my composition and communication class was a defendant plus and I think it gave me a great base for what is to come in my higher writing courses. I feel there is plenty of ways I can get better but for now I am proud of where I am at as a writer. Self Reflection Self Reflection The task that was given to us at the start of the semester was to make a group consisting of 3-4 people and collaboratively work with one another to achieve the goal of a 15-minute speech. The topic that was presented to my group, which consisted of myself, Josh Chua, Jack Winton and Greg Scopes was that of Marketing Mix Strategy. Through the week’s leading up to the speech, the group formulated ideas and attempted to find ways to keep the audience interested while trying to express key points of information on our topic.Although we felt prepared before the speech as a group we were nervous because we knew there were many things that we hadn’t touched on. Within this reflection I will touch on positive aspects of our speech such as parts that we excelled in and I will cover parts that negatively affected our speech such as things that we failed to produce. Positives Through reading the feedback it has been highlighted the parts of the speech where we hav e excelled and the parts of the speech were we have lacked to produce quality.It is clear from the feedback that we have successfully organized the presentation in a way, which was easy to follow for the audience, we evenly balanced the workload of the speech and we provided good examples to our topic of Product, Price, Distribution and Promotion through sufficient theory. Successfully organizing the presentation and information was a major goal for our group, as getting this right means that audience will easily be able to grasp the concept of our overall speech.We conducted a survey and it paid of with primary information and data. Evenly balancing the workflow in the presentation of the speech is an obvious positive as changing the speaker keeps the audience interested. Providing examples to back up our points was another obvious positive as this helped the audience understand the concept of our speech. Negatives After reviewing the feedback it is clear that the group had a lack of enthusiasm, relied to heavily on our script and lacked interaction with the audience.When it comes to enthusiasm of delivering the speech this is a very important topic as it keeps audience engaged, without this the audience will lose interest and zone out. During the speech it was obvious in some cases that the audience lost interest, which is a major negative when trying to sell an idea or a product. It is recommended that to improve on this fault more practice needs to be spent in order to learn the speech and product better, to be able to confidently say the speech. Too better help enthusiasm it would be wise to better learn our speech as a group.Throughout the speech it was clear that most members including myself relied heavily on palm cards. In a real business situation this would not be acceptable and would not reflect well. To improve on this if we were to repeat the speech it would be wise to learn the speech’s major points and only have dot points on the palm ca rds. By doing this it will keep audience more engaged as eye contact would remain constant. The third major negative to our speech was our lack of effort to interact and engage the audience with any activates or questions, which would of helped them better understand our topic.By not doing this simple task it reflects badly on us as a group, as audience lose interest. If this were to happen in a real business scenario there would be no chance in selling our product or idea. It is suggested that in order to better ourselves and our group’s chances of successfully selling our product, it is of vital importance that we keep audience engaged through activities, such as questions and discussion as a group. Conclusion From the feedback given it is obvious that there are places to improve on.By making the adjustments stated above it will reflect greatly on our group as we would not only be organizing our presentation well, evenly distributing the workload and providing examples but we would also be enthusiastic about our idea, through learning and understanding our speech better, we would be keeping eye contact with the audience more often, as a result of not using palm cards and finally we would be getting the audience involved, through activities such as regular questions to wake them up and deep discussion to make them understand.If these major negatives were touched on and made into positives I believe that our group could give a information filled speech while keeping audience entertained and engaged. Self Reflection Self Reflection The task that was given to us at the start of the semester was to make a group consisting of 3-4 people and collaboratively work with one another to achieve the goal of a 15-minute speech. The topic that was presented to my group, which consisted of myself, Josh Chua, Jack Winton and Greg Scopes was that of Marketing Mix Strategy. Through the week’s leading up to the speech, the group formulated ideas and attempted to find ways to keep the audience interested while trying to express key points of information on our topic.Although we felt prepared before the speech as a group we were nervous because we knew there were many things that we hadn’t touched on. Within this reflection I will touch on positive aspects of our speech such as parts that we excelled in and I will cover parts that negatively affected our speech such as things that we failed to produce. Positives Through reading the feedback it has been highlighted the parts of the speech where we hav e excelled and the parts of the speech were we have lacked to produce quality.It is clear from the feedback that we have successfully organized the presentation in a way, which was easy to follow for the audience, we evenly balanced the workload of the speech and we provided good examples to our topic of Product, Price, Distribution and Promotion through sufficient theory. Successfully organizing the presentation and information was a major goal for our group, as getting this right means that audience will easily be able to grasp the concept of our overall speech.We conducted a survey and it paid of with primary information and data. Evenly balancing the workflow in the presentation of the speech is an obvious positive as changing the speaker keeps the audience interested. Providing examples to back up our points was another obvious positive as this helped the audience understand the concept of our speech. Negatives After reviewing the feedback it is clear that the group had a lack of enthusiasm, relied to heavily on our script and lacked interaction with the audience.When it comes to enthusiasm of delivering the speech this is a very important topic as it keeps audience engaged, without this the audience will lose interest and zone out. During the speech it was obvious in some cases that the audience lost interest, which is a major negative when trying to sell an idea or a product. It is recommended that to improve on this fault more practice needs to be spent in order to learn the speech and product better, to be able to confidently say the speech. Too better help enthusiasm it would be wise to better learn our speech as a group.Throughout the speech it was clear that most members including myself relied heavily on palm cards. In a real business situation this would not be acceptable and would not reflect well. To improve on this if we were to repeat the speech it would be wise to learn the speech’s major points and only have dot points on the palm ca rds. By doing this it will keep audience more engaged as eye contact would remain constant. The third major negative to our speech was our lack of effort to interact and engage the audience with any activates or questions, which would of helped them better understand our topic.By not doing this simple task it reflects badly on us as a group, as audience lose interest. If this were to happen in a real business scenario there would be no chance in selling our product or idea. It is suggested that in order to better ourselves and our group’s chances of successfully selling our product, it is of vital importance that we keep audience engaged through activities, such as questions and discussion as a group. Conclusion From the feedback given it is obvious that there are places to improve on.By making the adjustments stated above it will reflect greatly on our group as we would not only be organizing our presentation well, evenly distributing the workload and providing examples but we would also be enthusiastic about our idea, through learning and understanding our speech better, we would be keeping eye contact with the audience more often, as a result of not using palm cards and finally we would be getting the audience involved, through activities such as regular questions to wake them up and deep discussion to make them understand.If these major negatives were touched on and made into positives I believe that our group could give a information filled speech while keeping audience entertained and engaged.