Glossophobia: Group Presentation of Critical Theories

While reflecting on the group project that I participated in yesterday I realized one thing: the anticipation is always worse than the act. I have always had a fear of pubic speaking because, no matter how well I know a subject, I tend to go blank once I am facing an audience. Yesterday my group members and I did our presentation of three literary criticism theories: Enlightenment, Formalism, and Structuralism. We worked well with each other and had split the theories up between the three of us so that we each had an equal share of work. I believe that each of us equally researched our topic and chose a text to analyze based upon the ideas of our theory. The choices that we made for the texts to analyze were very effective, in my opinion, in illustrating the concepts for each theory. Once in front of the class, we presented each individual theory and text and interacted with the class to analyze each text. I believe that these interactions went well and that the class had a good understanding of each concept, proving that the materials discussed in class along with the readings were effective in teaching these theories. Overall, we felt that our group presentation went well, which made me realize that no matter how nervous I am, it is never as bad as I imagined. Working with this group on an oral presentation greatly decreased the stress level and provided support in expressing ideas as well as creating a successful presentation.