Yow Kia

This was the first time I did my president opening address without preparing any note. As a Chinese-Educated person, I always prepared my English speech by writing out the full script and read through the script many times. I found that a lot of time, the first draft of my script had a lot of grammar mistakes, especially the tenses. For your information, there is no tenses usage in Chinese Language Grammar; there is only one form of the verb. Anyway, sometimes, when I spoke English, I would be more conscious of the tense to be used and even I’ve made mistake, I would immediately change back the correct tense. You may notice this while listening to my opening address. For prepared speech, I had lesser problem with the grammar because I would keep on modifying my script if I found any grammar error. I think it’s a great experience to practise giving a speech without preparing it. However, you have to think beforehand in what you want to speak. Everything has to be done in your mind…

Below are the mistakes that pointed out by fellow Toastmasters:
Wrong: I relent myself a little bit…
Correct: I relent a little bit…

Wrong: I had no public speaking background…
Correct: I had no public speaking experience…

Wrong: I don’t know what after I joined Bradell Heights…
Correct: I don’t know why after I joined Bradell Heights…

Wrong: My mind totally blank…
Correct: My mind went blank totally…

Wrong: We chit chat for some time…
Correct: We chatted for some time…

Wrong: Chinese New Year, gambled with my brothers, sisters, I lost and I cried…
Correct: I gambled with my brother during Chinese New Year and when I lost, I cried…

Wrong: Friends from outside the club not only inside the club…
Correct: Friends from outside this club, and friends not only from inside this club…

One way that I use to practise my spoken English recently is to listen to native English speaker’s audio clips and follow the way they speak. I think this is quite an effective way and I will continuously doing it everyday. I don’t mean to follow their accent, but the pronunciation and the sentence structure.