Yow Kia

What did I enjoy the most?
The Table Topic Master did a great job by leading the Table Topic Session with a short and fun story and then asked questions about the story. It’s an entertaining story. The story went like this… A lady was waiting at an airport waiting lounge for her departure. She was eating cookies and at the same time, a guy sitting beside her (a stranger), was eating the same cookies too. She found the guy irritating by STEALING her cookies without even notifying her. At last, the guy wanted to share the last piece of cookie with the lady. Guess what, the lady eventually found out her packet of cookies was still unopened! Then, the Table Topic Master proceeded with the questions: i) What do you think the moral of this story is? ii) If you were the lady, what’s your immediate thought. What would you do if you would to handle the situation differently and why? iii) Recall a similar experience and how did you react?

Who was the one left the greatest impression to me?
The VPE was presenting his project no. 7. He shared how he was trained to speak in front of public by his dad when he was young and he was a champion in public speaking when he was 15 years old. I like the way he dramatized the scene when he confronted to his dad when he was growing up as a teenager. He was given anything by his parents when he was young and he wanted to be independent and fight for his own career. With his passion and enthusiastic in his current job and the sincere way he deals with people, I believe, he surely can succeed in his career. GOOD LUCK!

What did I do during the chapter meeting?
As a project evaluator, I was evaluating “Project 3: Get to the point”, presented by a charming Toastmaster. Get to the point topic requires the speaker to specify the purpose of her speech. Her speech title was “The men don’t get it”, the purpose of her speech was to give tips to guys in how to interpret lady’s mind. I like her attempt to bring out the topic in her opening by saying, “Free drinks, free entrance to Disco…. It’s lady’s night…. The men don’t get it!” Well, the SPEECH TITLE was brought out; however, I found that there was no link between the opening and the body. Again, I love to give suggestion to speaker to improve on her opening.

ENGAGE WITH THE AUDIENCE AT THE VERY FIRST PLACE… “A pretty & charming lady, single & available, financially independent… Men, do you want this kind of lady to be yours? NO! You don’t get it! UNLESS, you master the tips that I’m going to share later…”

During the BODY, she was sharing 3 tips by bringing in the two characters MARS and VENUS. However, the stories that she shared were not her personal stories. It somehow couldn’t create resonance to me. It’s better to bring the speaker into her stories - personal stories. MARS-> Her Boyfriend, VENUS-> Herself. I think this would be a better way to pique audience’s interest and attention.

It appeared to me that during the Conclusion, the speaker was in rush of time. It just didn’t end properly. It’s important to wrap up the topic so that the audience could bring back something remarkable in the speech. It’s kind of waste if the Opening and Body were perfectly done and the Conclusion was just poorly elaborated. Perhaps, she could wrap up the session by repeating the initial statement – “Men, have you got it?”, and concluding the topic succinctly and powerfully.

Whenever I saw a speaker using notes, I just couldn’t stop myself to comment about it. I feel that it’s the speaker’s responsibility to strive for not using notes. After all, it’s still a prepared speech. Prepared speech means, you have to prepare for the presentation beforehand. I have discovered that if a speaker is discipline to herself and strive not to use notes by whatever means (mind-mapping/ visualization/ repeating the speech for many times/ rehearsing…), she could actually focus on other aspects like engaging with the audience, eye-contact, body movements, etc. It’s very important!

Overall, she is a jolly and witty speaker. Her smile is infectious, and audience will feel very comfortable by seeing a smiling face. It’s quite a pretty well-done Project 3. I really hope that she will try using my recommendations and I would like to see her improvement in her future speech.

Lastly, I concluded, “You can be a great speaker in the future, IF you implement the recommendations that I’ve suggested…”

I was too engrossed in giving recommendations and I ran OVER TIME! I ended my evaluation for 5 minutes and 5 seconds… POOR ME!

Language use
Good use of language:
- Dawn to dust
- Simple, short, sweet
- I relieve my memory of the child in me to my children.
- Notice among the books.
My father’s nagging pierced my ears.

Good use of humour:
- “I had fun time irritating my father…” “I don’t want to be your father.”
- I’m still a child; I still celebrate children’s day.
- The child should be in my wife, not in me.
- I still remember, when I was young, I celebrated children’s day with a lot of children.

Wrong use of language:
- hand it over (wrong) => hand over (correct)
- I paid for it (wrong) => I paid (correct)
- His project evaluator will be … (wrong) => His project evaluator is… (correct, it’s because that incident was happening during the speaker spoke out the sentence.)

Word of the day
Epitome (noun)
Meaning: a standard or typical example, “he is the epitome of good breeding”
Epitomize (verb)
Meaning: to be a typical example of, to sum up, “behaviour that empitomizes selfishness”
(Source from: http://thefreedictionary.com)