Summary – Public speaking tips for students

So where do these scammers learn speaking-persuasively skill? They didn’t go through any course of public speaking. Actually the skill is learnt from experience, lots of experience each complemented with a lot of unsuccessful experiment.

Well let me share with you my very own tips on public speaking. I can assure you it did not come from any books, if it does.. it is purely coincidental 🙂

1) Know your stuff
How can you talk about something you don’t have any idea about? you need to know everything there is to know about the topic you are going to speak. Try this…

You’re a blogger. Can you describe to me how to start a blog? I’m very sure you can talk about that for hours, complete with an explanation on how to install a cbox, importance of labels and even on how to kill your blog. You don’t know everything, but the thing that you know now is enough for you to confidently discuss them. And this is the first and the most important thing to do to be better at public speaking… Know your stuff head to toe, and toe to head.. and maybe from your bellybutton going up or down 🙂

2) Memorize then forget technique
Whenever I want to do presentation or speech, I will usually know exactly what I’m going to say. Call it a script if you want to. I will memorize it from start to finish. I see a slide, I will know exactly what my first line is going to be.

But the thing is.. whenever I speak tomorrow, I will purposely forget all the script. Instead I will come up with a new version to describe my point. Seriously… this will make you look like you are a proffesional speaker, casually describing all point without fail and missing anything (as if you don’t have a script at all).

When you know your stuff, and you know the sequence of your speech, you will be very confident. Trust me.. These two are the most important tips and by practising this, you will have no problem. I guarantee.

3) Know your fear
Exactly what is your fear of public speaking? Identify this and try to come up with ways on how to overcome it. For example, you are afraid that you will forget your speech. Then memorize them and write small notes to remind you of what the next topic will be. People don’t forget what they know. They forget the sequence of the speech and that what makes it a mess.

If you are afraid of the question people will ask you, and if you cannot answer. Then try this.. remind youself – you’re there to speak to the crowd, and the crowd is there to listen. They can ask.. and believe me, if you did not know the answer, just tell them you will check and get back to them on it. Nobody knows everything. In fact, if you do the first step.. which is to know your stuff, there’s no way you will not be able to answer them.

If I ask you the benefit of blogging, can you answer? Of course you can, even though you never actually think about it before. You can because you are very familiar with blogging and you can come up with the answer as soon as the question asked.

/end

A new category created.. “For Student” especially to my friends who is still studying. Hopefully I can be helpful to you guys 🙂 I will continue this topic tomorrow. same time tomorrow? 🙂

—- I wonder —-
I’m sure you must have your secret technique yourself.. Share share 🙂

———– Personal Note ————
My first public speaking in my life is when I was in standard 5 (11 years old). I was competing in a story telling competition. So there I was, representing my school. My English teacher thought that it would be a good practice if I can perform in front of the whole school first before the competition. So she made the arrangement.I was actually very confident then, telling the story, when suddenly I heard some voice from just in front of the stage. One boy actually point at me, and said “Eiii kuningnya gigi dia!” ahaha

And you know what, I forget my story altogether. And after a lot more critics from that Malaysian Idol Young Judges, I gave up and just walked away in the middle of the story. My teacher was very mad at me,

To cut things short, after a lot more practice, I won the District level competition. Yey! (but loses at the state level) hehe

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Summary – The best technique to improve memory – Association
Sometime when I look back at my previous entries, my God!! The topic is very random. But to tell you the truth, they are actually all connected. At least in my mind they are.

I’m thinking of blog, then I remember my friends > then friendster > “long time already not login” > time = 1am > work tomorrow > wish for a holiday > langkawi > beach and so on

Yes, dear friends. That’s exactly how our mind works. Let’s do an experiment. Try reading again the thought connection example. This time at any one time, just connect the two words. You can either picture it in your mind or just imagine the rationale behind the connection. I can guarantee you that you can recite the whole bunch of words front, back and even from the middle. However the trick is to exaggerate any images we conjure.

Another example maybe? Try this list – Celllphone, towel, toothbrush, bag, clock, camera etc

Cellphone to Towel
Now this is the hardest part – using our imagination. Be aggresively exaggerating. (read this very carefully.. and picture everything in your mind) Picture your handphone which is like spongebob squarepants. It very spongy (you can see yourself squeezing your spongy handphone) and absorp all water in a bucket if you drop it in. Now picture you using the handphone to dry yourself out from the shower just like a towel. So now you already connect handphone to towel.

Towel to Toothbrush
Forget about the spongy handphone. now imagine your favorite towel. you are walking to the towel and are going to use it. Suddenly you realize that there are thousands of toothbrush sewed into your towel (all full of colors!!). There’s red, blue and even your favorite color. Towel – toothbrush

Toothbrush to Bags
You are now brushing your teeth very early in the morning. But this toothbrush is very special. With every stroke going out from your mouth, you can actually see bags of different size shot out from the toothbrush (Just like Doraemon items). Imagine if you brush your teeth with 10 stroke. you can already open up bag’s store 🙂

Bag to Clock
Now you are ready to go to work/school. You took your bag (just like the pupils in primary school are using). However there is a big yellow smiley clock on your back instead of the bag. And people are laughing at you!! 🙂 bag – clock

Clock to Camera
Running back to your house, you decided to go to bed instead. There is an alarm clock on your bedside table. You set the alarm to wake you up in 10 minutes. When the alarm go off… instead of the normal ringing noise, you hear the sound of camera (very loudly). And from your clock, millions of photos of you sleeping in embarassing position are being thrown all over the place (you know the camera where you can get instant picture, imagine that). Clock – camera

So can you recite back all the items now? How about backward? I am not taking any credit on this technique. Using this technique, you can actually remember things better. Never assume our mind is old and cannot function that well. We are not introducing anything new to our mind. They have been doing this every second of our entire life.

Rule of thumb

• exaggerate
• use colors
• sex related imagination is easier to remember
• the more ridiculous, the better
• watch cartoons to be more graphic 🙂
• Associate with emotion; embarassing, angry, sad
• practise, practise and practise

————— Personal Note ————————–
Personally when I first started this memory thing. I can actually remember up to 30 things in order. Using the technique, it is not that difficult. The problem however is that I took nearly 1 hour just to memorize them ehehe. I guess with practise it will get better. But who actually remember 30 items to buy at supermarket? I myself prefer using paper and pen. But it’s always nice to know we can actually do such things 🙂 So guys, any other methods to remember things?

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1) You need money to get money

Im not talking about MLM or investment. I’m referring to the money needed during your job hunting process. You will need some money to attend interviews sometimes as far as in other states. Printing your resume, phone bills, stamps and not to forget those photograph will definitely burn a hole in your pocket.

What to do

• Do part time job, preferrably with shift so that you can schedule your work and go to interviews
• Start saving money from your part time job. Don’t start your shopping spree just yet. I know all those years eating only maggi mee are haunting you. yes, you deserve to be pampered after all that. But just not yet.
• Only after you secured a well paid job and stabilised, you can start on those dream to-do and to-have list.

2) You need to speak English to get a job

Regardless of what people say, as a graduate you are expected to have at least good spoken english. You don’t need to know exactly the difference of past present tense etc. You just need to be able to listen, understand and respond comfortably. You don’t even need to sound convincing to secure a job. 🙂

What to do

• Believe it or not, i learnt most of my english from tv shows. I love to watch sitcoms especially those without the subtitles. I guess subconciously the funny scene wil be replayed in my mind over and over again and the phrase become very familiar to be used.
• Read books
• Speak to your friends. Try to use proper sentence. There’s no shame in doing so.

3) You don’t need a credit card to show you are working

Simply put, credit card has no use except to be used for emergency. By emergency, I mean “you don’t have the money, you die.”

Credit card is being boast as the sign of stability and class. May be this is true at some level. But in my opinion, you are just borrowing money from your future self 
and in doing so, you pay the bank for letting you do this. 

Avoid credit card application at all cost. If you really need to have one, be sure you are ready to take the responsibility.

p.s. What other things do you guys think graduates should be told before they finish their study? At least they will not repeat the same mistake we did.

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