Today’s lecture went a lot better than I thought it would (not that I was hoping/expecting it to go wrong!). I was just worried at first that none of the students would respond to us (like in the review sessions). But all of the TAs did a good job and the ending was perfectly timed! During my lecture, I feel that I did good with transitions, voice (after the whole speakerphone thing was fixed), and that the students understood what I was talking about. A few times I did look to see the next slide that was coming up, instead of looking to see if anyone had any questions. Once again, I was used to review sessions, where no one asked questions.
I was somewhat nervous about talking, but once you start, things start to all flow together. I actually looked at that yellow booklet that you gave us during the TA meeting the night before about Delivering a Lecture (Ch 13). The strategies that I found most helpful were trying to talk to the students “as if you are speaking to an audience of one,” try to not read your presentation like a paper, taking deep breaths before your lecture (kind of ironic because we did the same calming exercise in the prior class), grabbing students’ attention with your opening (even though I am not sure if they got the link to Somatoform Disorders), maintaining eye contact with the class (which I kind of screwed up when they had thier hands raised and I was looking to see the next slide), LAUGHING AT YOURSELF WHEN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE (because you can only get so many bad microphones lol), pausing to see that students don’t look like they are lost, and avoiding “um,” “well,” “you know,” “ok,” and “so.” Of course I wasn’t thinking about everything I just mentioned while I was giving the lecture, but I defintetly recognized when I made one of the mistakes, and tried to catch myself before making it again.
I really think that speaking in front of a large group is good for the future. The reality is that it is not as bad as you think. Very few people probobly actually know when you screw up, and the more experience you have the BETTER you will get. 🙂