Lingnan Toastmasters

Yesterday, I went to a Toastmasters meeting. Toastmasters is an organization that helps people improve their public speaking ability. There are clubs in 90 countries that meet weekly or bi-weekly for 1-2 hours. During meetings, several members make short prepared speeches (generally about 5-10 minutes) and there’s also usually a “table topics” portion where people volunteer to give a very short (1-2 minute) impromptu speech on a topic chosen by the session host. Although this can be very intimidating, its great experience in thinking on your feet (both literally and figuratively). Since most people are afraid of speaking in public, Toastmasters provides a great way to conquer that fear and develop confidence since everything is done in a friendly way.

Anyone, the meeting I went to was at the Lingnan Toastmasters group. Several students and one guest from another Hong Kong Toastmasters club gave speeches on the topic of “heroes.” The standard superheros like Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman weren’t the wiiners though. Instead, it seemed that to the members, the biggest heros of the evening were anyone willing to take the chance to get up in front of the group to speak. As I was listening to the student speakers, I kept thinking how difficult it must be to make a speech in front of a fairly large audience in a language that isn’t your native language. All of the speakers were Chinese, but the speeches were all in English. Although many of the speakers were nervous, they all managed to get through it and do a good job, making some good points and even using some humor.

If I had to make a speech in Mandarin Chinese, I’d be pretty nervous and would probably end up saying something that no one would understand and I’d have a hard time filling up anywhere near 5 minutes. After all, there’s only so many times you can say ni hao (hello), wo shi meiguoren (I am American) before you have to just give up and say zaijian (goodbye). Of course, my fear of public speaking has diminished greatly since I started teaching since I speak to a classroom audience regularly, dazzling them with my genius and wit (as evidenced by the photo below).

Note: This photo is not from one of my classes, but I have observed this reaction on occasion. I gues that means there's always room fro improvement. End of speech - Until next time, Zaijian!