Week 9 - Final Reflection

My last post to my blog! How quickly nine weeks went, it feels like I just posted my introduction post in week one!

These activities have been beneficial for my speech and script development. Specifically that activities that I mostly enjoyed and found helpful where week two – ‘What makes a great speech’. This activity I enjoyed because it made you think about and consider what you enjoy about speeches and what speech over time whether they where from Barack Obama or your school principal that you enjoyed and why you enjoyed them. This activity allowed me to identify why I enjoy and believe these speeches are great speeches. It also contributed to my speech writing as I considered these elements. Another activity I found beneficial was week 5. Noticing how I talk. This was interesting, as you really don’t notice how you talk until you are asked to. It makes you consider how you speak and the way your speaking is received. Week 7 activity to do a piece to camera I also found to be very beneficial. As mentioned in my review of this activity, I found it very confronting to do a piece to camera as it made me feel uncomfortable to be followed with camera and watched by people that really didn’t have any idea of what I was doing. This activity was a good step towards feeling comfortable with doing a piece to camera. Finally weeks eight and nine activities where beneficial for the completion of assessment item two. These activities made me begin to think about the final assessment and begin working and drafting it.

At this stage I do feel that my speaking, writing and presentation of speaking has improved. In week one I read quickly and with little pause. Now, I feel that my speaking is clearer and appropriate pause is used to deliver the news story or speech. This improvement has come from the week’s activities. Particularly, from the practice of week ones news story on SBS World News. When I first read this news story it all blended into one and it was hard to determine the break of each topic. After reading again and evaluating the pause the journalist had when read my reading of this developed. This activity helped my speech overall and helped me to determine where pause is appropriate and where it is not. Looking over news story like this one and listening to other news stories over the nine weeks helped my writing of speeches and news stories.

I enjoyed the whole blogging experience. At first when I read over the task of blogging each week I really didn’t see myself enjoying it. However it was a good way to reflect on each activity and also a good way to practice the presentation of writing. I enjoyed formatting my blog layout and making it look good. Have to post each week’s activities onto my blog was useful as it made doing the activates weekly compulsory and when you have created a ‘pretty’ blog with layout etc. you only want to post information on there that you are happy with. This meant that I focused more on each weeks activates then I would have if I where posting to a forum. I wanted all my work there to be well done.

I feel relatively confident with the final piece of assessment. I feel that after completing week eight and week nine activates I have a better generally understanding of the task. The only worry I have is the length of the maiden speech. Initially before completing week eights activities I thought that there would be no way I would be able to write a speech with the max word count being 4000 words. However after writing week eights activities with what topics and information will be addressed in the speech I feel that my maiden speech for assessment item two may be able to have a large word count. Once identifying the key electoral points I feel that I can extend on these.

Overall I feel that the past nine weeks of activates have been a constructive way to develop my skills in speech and script. I feel that they have allowed me to now have the ability to effectively and professional write and deliver a speech.