Strength in Public Speaking
During my sophomore year, a strength I have developed is public speaking. Public speaking is a trait that I try to work on every year. Each year at STEM brings more opportunities for me to improve my public speaking. This year, there was the Monologue Project and Science Fair. Public speaking has many forms. It can be to present in front of a large audience or to a smaller, more personal audience. It is often easy to think about public speaking as just being in front of a large audience (like the Monologue Project), but endeavors like Science Fair often require that we be prepared to talk to a small group of judges. These two projects each highlight the two forms of public speaking. Continue reading to find out how each of these forms targeted the different aspects of public speaking.
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The Imperial Rule Monologue’s objective was to create a story that portrays a character who is experiencing Imperial rule (think of a monologue as the thoughts of a character, addressed to themselves or to the audience). There were around 10 different stories to choose, from which I chose India. We had already learned about the struggle of each nation but still had to research more specific events that shaped their cause. After researching, we developed a character who experienced imperial rule. Different nations had varying struggles, so how you portrayed their resistance had to be historically accurate. In the script, these three things had to be answered: How were they ruled? How did they resist? What was the aftermath? Once you had done so using enough emotion, you were ready to rehearse and present in front of your peers. As the teacher said, “many of these people did not get to share their stories, so you have to do it for them”. We had to show the same emotion that they would if they were presenting.
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To prove that I grew because of this project I will present to you three artifacts. My script displays the dialogue that I would say during the monologue. It displays actions, emotions, and cues. This was a new type of public speaking to me. I was not used to doing many acting pieces, so I definitely needed some practice to do well. I have a recording of a practice that I did, which shows me reading off the script. As you can see, I do not display much emotion in what I am saying; I am very monotonous. After practicing the script a few times and memorizing it (because the final presentation had to be memorized), I started to add emotion. Over time, my performance got much better, until it was the final day. On the final day, I felt confident presenting my monologue. I was enunciating, moving about the stage, and showing emotions. From the final rubric, you can see that I scored well on all of the categories, even the ones concerned with "emotion". Through this project, I learned to perform in front of a large crowd. I had to learn to gauge the audience, and put on a show!
Imperial Monologue Practice
Another form of public speaking that I improved on this year was through Science Fair. Science Fair is a requirement I had to do for my Biology class. For Science Fair, I had to choose a topic that interested me that I could research. I decided to make a more efficient stoplight system; I wanted a smarter stoplight system. I achieved this by designing an app that would connect to a stoplight server. The app was coded to send the driver’s data (their location and travel path). The stoplight server was coded to connect and receive data from the app. It then computed the fasted path for each car to follow across the intersection. After completing the project, I had to prepare to present it to science fair judges. I wrote a report discussing the project and its implications. I also made a science fair board to accompany my presentation. I then presented this board to the science fair judges.
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This type of presentation was more one-to-one. I usually only had one judge interact with me at a time. There were a few cases when there were three, but that was the maximum. During this presentation, in addition to being a little quieter than the Monologue, I had to be more technical. The science fair judges were people from all kinds of fields, some of who were from the engineering field. To impress them, I had to use some engineering jargon. To prepare I wrote out a script and made flashcards. These flashcards had to be concise, and I only used one at the day of the presentation. I remember writing down questions that I anticipated for from the judges. This was because this form of public speaking is not very predictable; your audience (the judges) might ask you a question on the spot. You should be confident enough to answer it—or confident enough to admit that you do not have a good answer. The “unpredictability” is what sets this form of public speaking apart.
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An artifact that I would like to show was the grade I got from the judges themselves. The rubric that they used has a category called “clarity of expression” that I got an average of 9.33 points on, out of 10 (the average was taken from three judges). This ranks in the “Superior” category. This shows that my ability to translate my project to the judges was “superior”. The judges seemed genuinely interested in the project, so it was easy for me to continue explaining it to them. I answered any of their questions, and made sure to clarify any doubts.
During this year, I have had many opportunities to speak in public. There are so many projects that I have not included that had their share in improving my Public Speaking. These are the steps I have to take to help me in the future talk to an audience that I have not prepared for; the monologue audience was my World History class. One thing I want to work on next year is being able to get my point across; I think I lost some points in the “clarity of expression” category for Science Fair because of my lack of this skill. In the future, I want to be able to speak to a crowd and explain to them what I am saying with detail. This year I made progress in the first half of the previous statement.