Alyssa Sinko

Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

Dr. McLaughlin
12/11/14
Rough Delivery: My TED Talk
I have been dreading this assignment all year and I cannot tell you enough how
happy I am to finally be done with it. All and all, creating a TED talk was not my favorite
assignment of the year. However, I am very passionate about my topic and creating this
presentation was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
In general, I love watching TED talks. The beginning assignments, which gave us
examples of how to create this talk, were very helpful in the process. What I enjoyed
most about these examples of TED talks were the visual aids each performer used. Since
I was nervous to start writing my speech, I began my project by beginning my visual aid.
I used my visual aid as emphasis for my facts and also as a guide to move my talk along.
I think the use of facts added well to my presentation because they allowed the audience
to really soak in and understand the points I was making and their importance to my
presentation. I also made the visual aid simple, so the audience would be focusing more
on my content and less on the pictures or pizazz of the PowerPoint. To keep it simple, I
used basic coloring and a minimal amount of pictures. In general I do believe my
PowerPoint was done well and delivered my points well.
The hardest part for me was my speech. After the visual aid I combed through my
research paper in order to find the points I needed to make and draft my speech. I chose
to focus on the Law and Order section of my paper and to focus less on news media. In

order to do this, I separated my speech into sections: What is mental illness and how does
it affect people? How do we learn about this disease? How does mass media portray this
disease? And finally, what medias lessen this stigma? I thought this format made forming
my point and position easy.
I went through my speech for multiple days before the performance and I really
thought I had it down well. However, my stage fright got the best of me during my
performance. I dont think my performance was awful, but there were moments where I
froze and stuttered and used words such as like and yeah. If I were to do a project
like this again, I would practice in front of a group of people before my real performance
to work on my stage fright and delivery. Other than that, for the type of project it was, I
feel like I did it to the best of my ability.