Final Evaluation

[Brian Mahoney]

Watching the video again, I feel like I did a little better than I initially thought, but that's not saying much. I noticed several words that I butchered pretty badly, so I'm sure there were many more I didn't notice. I think I attribute that mostly to nerves, since I feel like if I focus enough I can say most things more or less correctly (minus a few specific sounds that I know I can't usually make well). I'm sure I have a terrible accent, but in the video there are definitely some words that I just flat out say wrong, as opposed to just with an accent. The main problem that I noticed both during the conversation and after was with grammar and specifically with syntax. I think this comes mostly from the fact that I would start to say something and then realize mid sentence that there was something else I wanted to add so I would have to thrown it in at the wrong place. If I have time to think through a whole sentence I'm pretty comfortable figuring out how it should be said, but when talking to someone you usually think on the fly so you don't necessarily know everything you are going to say before you start talking. I think this is one of the reasons my monologue is so slow and disjointed. I had noticed how many mistakes I had been making in the conversation so I tried to slow down and be more careful. I think it worked for the most part (along with the fact that it was rehearsed), but it made my delivery really awkward. This was made worse by the fact that there wasn't a clear progression to some of what I said. There were a few things I had wanted to say but forgot and then said later when I remembered, so there are some sentences that are out of place and don't seem to fit into any sort of logical train of thought. I tried to work in a couple less common tenses (like past imperfect) and I think I used them correctly for the most part, but I also wouldn't necessarily know if I didn't. Overall, I think I could have done a little better but I'm not surprised that I'm not at the level where I can really carry out a full conversation effectively yet.