Informative Speech On Unicorns

Immediately, I had my topic chosen for the Oral Communications second speech, the Informative Speech; usually it takes me ages to come up with a subject, so it was nice to get the most difficult part of it out of the way straight from the get-go. I was prepared well in advance and had an extravagant introduction and conclusion planned. My outline and sources were finished and put together before many of my classmates that I knew of, and I was rehearsed and felt confident. It was an interesting choice, I thought, and I enjoyed learning what I did from the research. I thought the rest of the class would enjoy hearing about the topic, unicorns, too. I did feel a bit attached to my notecards, and the more I looked up the more I felt like I was improvising. Next time, I'll practice and rehearse even more so I stay fluent and sound knowledgeable, like I did this time, but can use even more eye contact. That will improve my
confidence and the impact of my performance, too. People pay much more attention to you when you're looking at them directly in the eyes and speaking with confidence and security in what you're saying. It's especially important, I think, when you're speaking about something informative or persuasive. That's why I've always liked writing informative papers and giving informative speeches. I don't get too nervous in front of people, either, so the speech itself and the presentation wasn't too difficult. A bit of adaptation had to occur when my plan to have background music proved be too complicated and involved given the circumstances, but otherwise props turned out well and it didn't take too much practice and work to make it happen effectively. With each speech I give, I hope to grow with confidence, content, and effectiveness. I want my attention-getter and introduction, along with my conclusion, to be more extravagant than the last time. There was a lot that I learned when I researched unicorns for this presentation. One thing was evident that I had always known: unicorns are awesome. They have been in existence for almost three thousand years. It is referenced in the bible seven times. Ancient Greeks and other Europeans believed that their horns and blood possessed magical healing powers. We still keep some of these traditional theories in our new fantasy stories, movies, books, and other pop culture stuff. This was a nice link between the past and present history of the legends, and I think it worked well to capture the audience throughout the entire length of my speech. We think of unicorns as being white horses with long horns, magical powers, and sometimes like battle horses in medieval times.
These come from ancient European stories gathered by the Greek doctor Ctesias based on Indian travelers' accounts. The unicorn was also being 'discovered' in Asia, where the Japanese believed this creature brought justice by punishing criminals, piercing their horns through their hearts. The Chinese had a unicorn which was peaceful, like the European unicorn, which was swift, isolated, and multicolored. It was a symbol of a just and good ruler, could live thousands of years, and had magical writing tattooed on its back of dragon scales. It was clear that the class enjoyed the variety of information I was giving, like these stories and descriptions from other cultures, even though the general topic itself was seemingly broad. I was worried I'd get off-topic, but at lunch when I first wrote this, Stephanie told me that she ended up writing about politicians in her journal. That in mind, I suppose I'm not too far off track.
Comparatively. I neglected to mention earlier, I had planned to also wear some unicorn gear. A unicorn T-shirt, possibly bring along a fluffy unicorn backpack from Universal Studios that I bought on the band trip to California (from the film Despicable Me). Perhaps I should have mentioned that in my speech. It would have been another nice reference back to popular culture for my final point, the modern-day unicorn we think of today.
Overall I thought my research, content, and performance were well polished and quite adequate. But, as I mentioned earlier, there is always room to improve.