1 down 7 to go

I'm talking about the Toastmasters course.

8 lessons in total. Manage to get through the first one just as I expected.

Overall, I think it is fairly a good course to be in to practice impromptu speeches and improving communication and presentation skills. What's included in the session includes

- presentation,

- evaluation of fellow speakers by presenting your findings to the floor,

- time-keeping report (yes, presentation again), where you report at the end of the session how did everyone go with their time limit

- grammer report indicating how many "uhmm" and "ah" are there through out the night

-positive feedback and constructive criticsms

- table topics (something I loathe but Denise said I handled it quite well) where someone just called up your name, give you a topic and you have 1 minute to speak about it..

e.g "you are a leader of a political party, you walk into a room without a speech prepared, however, the crowd is waiting for your address." Pls begin....

My mind just went blank being the first one of the night to be called upon for this assignment. Imagine 20 pairs of eyes looking at you, waiting for your response. Afraid to say the wrong things at the wrong time, I stared back and begin my thinking process but ain't not fast enough. With some help, I manage to speak on a more comfortable topic, "favourite restaurant". I guess if you give me a topic, I'm able to handle it. But role-playing, I might find it a bit hard to get my head processing. Is hard to act, but it is important to learn to do so.

1 session down, 7 to go, 3 more presentations, 1 evaluation and 1 reporting to do. WoooHoo.. I better open my mouth and switch on my brains. Doesn't help that the course is held after work.

Seriously hope my skin is thick enough and I'm able to get some good out of the course. Have a good weekend.