Kyle Zmurk

CIS 110
Joe Martin
Speech: Reflective Essay
12/1/14

For me my culture speech on The Religious Views and Values of Saudi Arabia was
fairly easy. I have never had difficulty speaking in front of people. That being said, this speech
was a little different for me. I did my speech based off of a young man named Hashim, I first met
Hashim because he is roommates with one of my good friends from my home town. Shortly after
meeting Hashim I began to ask questions about his life in Saudi Arabia, the stories he would tell
me were fascinating and I was intrigued to say the least. Therefore when I was assigned this
essay and speech I knew exactly what my topic would be.

One thing I think I did very well with in my speech was talking, I did not get choked up
or lose my train of thought. Because everything I was saying was what I had learned from my
new friend Hashim, it was not boring information I was being forced to present on. Therefor I
believe my speech flowed nicely with necessary pauses and great organization.

Another aspect of my speech that stood out to me was that I was not presenting on a topic
that did not interest me, I had already caught interest in the Saudi Arabian culture due to the
stories that Hashim had told me prior to the assignment. This gave me an advantage before I
even gave my speech because I was able to talk about the topic of Saudi Arabia with a sense of
passion and interest.

Lastly I would like to touch on my use of nonverbal communication in my culture

speech. I believe my nonverbal communication has greatly improved since my first speech in
this class. During my first speech I would catch myself touching the back of my neck constantly
as well as fidgeting with my hands for the entirety of the speech. My culture speech was the
exact opposite, I was able to refrain from touching my neck all together and was also able to
keep myself from fidgeting as much as I did before. Instead of fidgeting my hands I was able to
use them to assist in giving my speech which has a positive effect on the attention of the
audience.

Overall I surprisingly enjoyed working on this speech, and presenting it as well. I have
noticed that I have made drastic improvement on my presentation skills as a whole, but mostly in

the aspect of my nonverbal communication and clarity of my speech. I believe most of this
improvements came subconsciously due to the fact that I actually had an interest in the topic I
was presenting, I owe this all to Hashim and his ability to make me want to dig deeper int the
Saudi Arabian culture. In the end I did better on this speech than I had ever though I could, even
though I have never been afraid of public speaking, I never really enjoyed the act of public
speaking but this project has taught me otherwise.