Yow Kia

Last Saturday night, I went to meet my primary school friend who flew all the way from Australia for a short trip in Singapore. He is still pursuing his Phd studies in Australia. What a promising guy! We have not met for more than 10 years! Then, what brought us together, you may be thinking? It’s because of this public speaking website that I’ve created. One day, all of a sudden, he messaged me through MSN messenger and told me that he was so impressed about what I’ve done recently. Of course, that made me feels good while receiving compliment from a good friend. By the way, his name is Kheng, who wrote me an article – “Sharing of experience” in this blog.

Kheng, me and his friend - Yee (who is working in Singapore), went to a lounge which is located at Orchard Road to have a jug of beer. That was a very hot weather while we were enjoying freezing beer. Knowing that I have passion in public speaking, Kheng shared with us his communication experience in Australia. We all have the same background – English is not our first language. The very common pronunciation mistakes that we’ve made are the pronunciation in “v” and “th”. I totally agree with him. I was so surprised that Western people cannot understand what we are saying if we pronounce “v” as “w”. Simple word like “very”, if we pronounce it as “wery”, they will start throwing this sentence “I beg your pardon.”. Indeed, he had struggled a lot over there. Because of this problem, he decided to take up a pronunciation course to perfect his pronunciation. To learn a new skill is actually not so difficult, but to correct a 20-year-old bad habit, it’s quite a challenging task. Time spent and results always grow proportionally. The more time he spent on correcting his pronunciation, the faster he improved. But, he said he is still not 100% perfect yet in his pronunciation. I guessed he was too humble.

Kheng’s friend - Yee who joined us for the drink shared his story to us too. He was so curious on how to improve his communication skills. Kheng threw him a question, “Do you feel fear if you were asked to give a presentation in Chinese?”. The answer is, NO PROBLEM! Kheng knows his friend so well. So, the killer for Yee in communication skills is actually his English Language. Yee knew The Toastmasters Club a couple of years ago but he didn’t really know what a Toastermasters Club does. I explained to him and encouraged him to join me. By investing time in this club, I guarantee that he can improve his communication skills tremendously. This is the assurance that I can give to him as I have seen improvement from my club members. Of course, their speaking skills are still far beyond to reach professional standard. However, the bottom line of learning a new skill is still making progress and improvement.

I think Yee will be taking up the challenge to join my journey to master the art of communication skills. I strongly believe that he can do it, so do I.