Writing a speech is easy. Talking to someone about a speech you have to give is easy. Practicing your speech is easy. Giving a speech is not. Through my public speaking class, I learned a lot about the art of giving a speech, creating a logical plan for my speech, and the strengths and weaknesses of my public speaking ability . My strengths as a speaker are that I can maintain eye contact with an audience and convey to my audience the passion I have for certain topics. My general weaknesses are that I can get caught speaking too quickly, causing me to skip sentences or words, and my ability to create an outline for my speech. I will review my informative and persuasive value speech by looking at three different criteria, content, delivery and overall assessment, and evaluate myself in depth. Even though I don't have audio of my informative speech, I can still assess my mannerisms and eye contact. For the introduction to my speeches, I used many different techniques. In my informative talk about how to vote in an election, I used statistics like: “According to a Huffington Post article titled “Youth Vote 2012 Turnout” by Tyler Kingkade, only 19% of voter turnout in 2012 election was by people aged 18-25,” to provide my audience with a confusing and surprising statement to grab their attention. In my persuasive value speech, I didn't have a topic as popular as voting in elections, so I had to familiarize my audience with the Duke basketball players and a little history of their team. The introductory sentence to my speech of persuasive value was necessary due to my audience's lack of knowledge about Duke basketball and its program. In my conclusions I used a very firm medium of paper and acted...... for better outlines and spending more time on my plan. With a better plan, I think your speaking skills will improve because you can insert places in your plans to remind yourself to pause, emphasize certain points, use hand gestures at certain points. To achieve this, I will spend more time on my plan and go into more detail in my plan to make small points that can help me during my speech. Over the course of the semester, I realized that I was very far from being a perfect public speaker, but I can aspire to be one. Through the feedback I received throughout the semester and evaluating my strengths and weaknesses while reviewing my delivery, content, and overall evaluation, I can become a better public speaker and a better speaker overall . Your words are valuable in academia and even more valuable when you know what you're doing with them.