Criteria for Evaluating an Individual Presentation Department of Languages – Sandhills Community College
Keys to the Oral Presentation
Eye Contact		Use the Left-Right-Center or 9-3-12 rotational pattern to include all members of your audience. Practice the speech so that notes serve as reminders rather than reading material; this will enable you to achieve sustained eye contact throughout the presentation.
Volume		Adjust the volume for the venue. Work to insure that remote audience members can clearly hear even the inflectional elements in your speech.
Inflection		Adjust voice modulation and stress points to assist the audience in identifying key concepts in the presentation. Remember that inflectional pauses occur at sentence and paragraph points in the speech; they can also signal questions and shifts in subject matter.
Poise		Breathe on the way to the podium to drain the excess adrenalin that might otherwise surface as audible nervousness. Anchor your feet so that you are not bleeding off nervousness through foot action, and avoid unnecessary arm or facial movements.
Pronunciation		Choose words carefully to minimize pronunciation problems. For difficult key words, insert phonetic spelling indicators in the text of the speech or in the margins.
Gestures		Incorporate hand gestures and head gestures when they will help stress key points. However, avoid overuse of gestures because they can become “visual noise.”
Grammatical Correctness		Recognize that learned members of the audience judge the merits of a speech by its correctness.
Enthusiasm for Topic		Believe that the speech contains important information and reveal your belief in the importance of the speech through animated presentation.
Rate of Flow		Practice the speech for delivery of 150 words per minute. Experts suggest a rate of flow that falls between 150 and 175 words per minute to keep the audience fully engaged.
Minimal Intrusions		Avoid the natural impulse to fill “pause points” with utterances such as “uh,” “uhm,” or “okay.” Also, avoid nervous habits such as “jewelry twirling” or “clothes tugging” since these also result in “visual noise.”
Evaluation of Individual Oral Presentation
EVALUATION OF SPEECH COMPONENTS (30 Points)
Component		Introduction	Body	Conclusion	Possible Points	Points Earned	Notes and Comments
Eye Contact		1	1	1	3
Volume		1	1	1	3
Inflection		1	1	1	3
Poise		1	1	1	3
Pronunciation		1	1	1	3
Gestures		1	1	1	3
Grammatical Correctness		1	1	1	3
Enthusiasm for Topic		1	1	1	3
Rate of Flow		1	1	1	3
Minimal Intrusions		1	1	1	3
					Possible 30 Points
ADDITIONAL REQUIRED ELEMENTS (10 Points)
This section may include visual aids, evidence of research, or handouts.					Possible 10 points
SPEECH COMPONENT SCORE					Possible 40 Points
EVALUATION OF TEXTUAL COMPONENTS (60 Points)
Component		Quality			Possible Points	Points Earned	Notes and Comments
Introduction	Introduces the general topic. Focuses audience attention by narrowing the topic. Includes a central idea or thesis, which announces the key issues or concepts to be discussed.				20
Body	Development: Thoroughly supports and explains the thesis. Expression: Uses precise language, varied sentence beginnings, and varied sentence patterns. Coherence: Announces shifts in focus through logical transitional elements. Organization: Uses a logical and recognizable organizational pattern. Unity: Each sentence supports the main idea of the section and links the concept to the overall thesis. Language Choice: Shows concern for audience knowledge and limitations by incorporating contextual clues and parenthetical definition of unfamiliar words.				30
Conclusion	Completes the development of the thesis. Reiterates key concepts. Offers powerful or resonating closure.				10
Textual Components Score					60 Points
Speech Component Score					40 Points
Total Score					100 Points