Public Speaking Growth Evaluation

Public Speaking Growth Evaluation Katharine Beck University of Pittsburgh COMMRC 1085: Public Speaking Kelly O’Donnell March 13, 2026 Taking a public speaking course has been full of ups and downs. After completing two months of a public speaking course, I can confidently say that my ability to deliver speeches in front of an audience has improved. When I first started the class, I was very nervous. This course is a requirement for my major, and I have been avoiding it since my freshman year until now. As indicated in my initial communication quiz, talking to new people doesn’t scare me. I don’t mind speaking in a class environment, group discussion doesn't scare me, and neither does raising my hand to ask questions. However, the idea of standing alone in front of an audience and addressing the crowd for an extended period of time absolutely frightened me. In my first practice speeches, a lot of my comments were that I used a lot of verbal fillers. This is most likely due to my tendency to use the word “like” a lot. I use it quite frequently in my day to day life, probably more than I should. Unfortunately, using the word “like” in a formal speech is frowned upon. This gave me something to focus on for my informative speech. As I practiced for the big speech, I made sure to do it in front of my friend. This helped hold me accountable so as not to use verbal fillers as much. When I gave the informative speech, I was able to do so without any verbal fillers. This is a big accomplishment and is an indicator of how I’ve grown in this course. Along with voiding verbal fillers from my formal speech vernacular, I also grew in confidence. Consistently getting up in front of an audience to give some sort of speech each week for the class helped grow my public speaking abilities. It allowed me to get comfortable in the uncomfortable. I found that my most successful speeches are those when I talk about something I enjoy or am passionate about. For example, I feel as though my breakthrough speech was when I spoke about my favorite appliance. My favorite appliance is a Revlon hairbrush. I love this tool and use it often in my everyday life. Since I know so much about it and love it, I was able to talk about it without fumbling my words or losing confidence. My informative speech was about the nursing shortage and COVID-19. As a nursing major myself, this is a topic I feel passionately about. This allowed me to have more confidence when talking about it because I felt I already had the foundational knowledge for the topic. Something that I have learned so far that has helped me become a better public speaker is how important it is to use your body. In terms of communication, your body language can say so much. This class definitely helped me realize that. You can see the difference when someone gives a speech, and their body language is rigid compared to someone else giving a speech and their body language is open and proud. This is something I tried to accomplish in my informative speech with the use of my hands. In the next speech, I plan to use the space more and have more open body language. Some of the feedback from my informative speech that I will use in my persuasive speech is to avoid touching my hair and use the space more. I also plan to pace myself a bit more throughout the speech to avoid getting flustered at the end. To achieve this, I plan on rehearsing my speech a lot to be able to go up in front of my classmates with confidence. Knowing the speech even better than the last time will help me use the space more, as I won’t have to think so much about what I am saying. To improve over the rest of the semester, I plan on having more open and better body language. I want to utilize the space more in my next speech to demonstrate confidence and growth. Overall, I am excited to grow even more in my public speaking abilities in the last two months of the course. I have found things that I have improved and found things I still need to word on. I have found that public speaking is an essential tool that every person should have. No matter what your major is or what job market you're heading to, having a formal class in public speaking can help tremendously. It can help with confidence and conveying your thoughts coherently to a crowd. I am excited to use my newfound skills in the nursing field.