IOP Reflection

After reading the blog responses for the topic “My Reaction to Disgrace”- Wednesday, March 26, 2008- I realized an opinion most of us had in common: that the story starts out fast-paced and interesting when it takes place in the city but slows down and becomes boring when David moves to the country. Reading sirena’s post, which said, “When the setting was at Lucy's farm, everything was so routine and the plot was very slow, I felt as if I was living at the farm too”, made me make the connection between the setting and writing style (thanks sirenaJ). So, I decided to base my IOP on writing style, with the thesis: JM Coetzee’s writing style plays an important role in depicting and creating a fuller perspective of the novel’s setting. I put extracts from most blogs on my powerpoint and asked the writers to read them as a hook because I felt that it would get everyone more engaged. the powerpoint was basically, my only visual aid

Preparing the presentation was not as difficult and time-consuming as I had imagined. It went pretty smoothly. However, going back to look for notes in the novel was frustrating, especially since I hadn’t touched the book in months. However, I kept everything for last minute so I didn’t have enough time to practice and finalize. That’s the main reason my delivery wasn’t very good. . My voice, first of all, was not loud enough. I wasn’t very comfortable during my presentation, I made a few grammatical mistakes, I used a lot of vocal pauses (especially “um”), and I slightly exceeded the allotted time. I noticed all that through the process of reflection, which included watching myself on tape, and writing the actual reflection. So all in all, what I learned from the IOP process as a whole, is that presentations and public speeches are not as hard as they appear, as long as you practice until you’re comfortable with what you’re doing, and don’t leave everything for the last minute.