Reflection to my own learning on AEP

a) What are the most valuable things you learned about the process of preparing and delivering presentations?

Before taking this course, I'd never prepared as much as I did for this class. I'd never actually rehearsed what I would say nor written down the script. However, to keep myself on the right track during the presentation and to make a good time management, I realized how it is important to have rehearsals beforehand. I tended to become panicked during the speech due to the lack of preparation but by preparing well as I did in this class, I found out such problem could be easily avoided. Now I know that writing the script is not always a good idea as I tend to look at them and fail to make eye contact, but it is still a useful way to organize what I would say in my presentation, and by doing so I can see whether I would be able to finish up within the given time. So as the most valuable thing I learned in terms of preparation, I would say that I learned the effect of preparation itself.

As for the delivering process, I found out that regardless of topics of the presentation, certain level of passion is definitely required. I will talk about more specific skills I've learned for delivering presentation in next paragraph (below), and so as a more general finding, I realized the importance of the speaker's passion toward the topic. As I watched a number of presentations done by members of this AEP class, I saw different levels of their communication skills. However, even if one lacks in using non-verbal communication skill for example, as long as he/she is passionate enough about the topic, the presentation becomes a good one. When I did my 2nd presentation on "How to make cappuccino", I thought that I wasn't successful in making appropriate gestures. However, what I think now after finishing up with the entire AEP program is that it was the best presentation I made throughout this course. This is probably because I talked about my hobby, and that is what I'm most passionate about now. I was able to talk with natural smiles and was enjoying explaining/showing all these steps and machines for making a cup of coffee. In future, I'm sure that there will be times when I can't become passionate about the topic, but in order to make a good presentation, I will try to be enthusiastic as much as possible through careful research and preparations.


b) In what presentation skill areas do you feel you have made progress or improved your awareness?

I think I improved my awareness on making stress and pauses during the speech. Both in Japanese and English, I usually speak fast and put no stress. It just goes and goes on, and so I often realize that I'm making listeners hard to see what my points are. Putting stress on the important words/phrases and making some pauses during the speech let the audience understand the speech better, and I tried to do so in the last presentation in this AEP class. I could have made my stress and pauses even stronger, but I think it was successful enough to grab the attention as well as to make the presentation effective and persuasive as a whole.

As a second point of my improvement, now I know how to lead the Q&A session. I used to consider Q&A time as something optional to the presentation, and not as something important. Lessons on how to repeat/paraphrase the question and phrases for closing the presentation were very useful, which I will definitely use for my future presentations.


c) What points do you want to improve further in your future presentations? How can you improve those?

As I said above, though I am sure that my voice controls in terms of putting stresses and pauses improved, it could become even more stronger to make the presentation more persuasive and impressive. I believe that preparations and rehearsals are essential for achieving this. Doing rehearsals a number of times helps myself remember what I should talk about next, and therefore I will be able to focus more on making effective stresses and pauses.

Use of visuals is another point that I want to improve further in future. Looking at great slides made by AEP members, I learned many tips and ideas for creating good PP slides that I want to use for my future presentations. Also, after my second and last presentations, both of my reflection partners told me that I'm using too much words on one slide. Before taking this course, I wasn't sure what to write down on the PP slide and what to talk about in actual presentation. Nonetheless, now it is clear and there are more to get better.