Hi Felix.
First of all, congratulations for accepting to take part in this public exercise. This is certainly good practice for stress management and an excellent preparation for exams or tests !
Then a few comments about the speech. It is relatively long (over 6 minutes) and relatively easy : the speaker – who is a native- is clear; the structure of her speech is pretty straight forward and the pace not too fast (although not as slow as you would think just listening to her..)
As far as your note-taking is concerned, I was struck by the considerable time-lag with which you note. It’s good because it helps you grasp what the speaker’s intentions are and pre-process the information before you actually note it down. Beware however of being too far behind the speaker, especially in case of enumerations. There are such enumerations a couple of times during the speech and each time you left out part of the items. Your time lag should be more elastic (just like your ear-to-voice span in simultaneous). In other words, you should be able to adapt it according to needs.
Otherwise I haven’t much to say about your notes, it took me some time to decipher them but that’s not an issue. Your notes are for you and you only and what matters is that you can read them easily. As for this last point, I would recommend that you anticipate more than you currently do. In other words, your eyes should always be an idea further down on your note pad than the passage you’re interpreting. This would help you get rid of hesitations, pauses…Remember, your performance should always be shorter than that of the speaker !
This speech is also a good example of how important general knowledge is even when the topic is as general as the one here. Ovid was not a problem for you, nor was Coco Chanel or Josephine Baker. You could therefore use abbreviations (C. Chanel; Joseph Baker for instance)and expand your notes when you interpreted (Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker). Ceruse was more of a problem although the message came across.
A last comment on your body language : the eye contact was OK (when you will know how to anticipate reading back your notes – see above – it will further improve) but you should be careful with your left hand which you tend to use a little too often to emphasize what you are saying.
I hope this helps and wish you all the best
Sarah BORDES
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