4th April 2012 is a day to remember. My collegue, Siti Ayu and I were invited to give a talk to UNITEN students in Muadzam. That was the first time in my life I spoke in front of a strong crowd of about 200 people in a huge, grand auditorium. It's a wow! What an experience I had. The topic was on 'Effective Presentation Skills' - I did the first part for about 40 minutes and Ayu continued for another half an hour.
We rehearsed few times in our college prior to the talk. We rehearsed in front of our collegues and they commented and gave feedback on our performance.
I did have a stage fright at first but as soon as I started, it was gone and I enjoyed presenting my points.
I must say that I was quite satisfied with my performance upon concluding my part and I saw the same satisfied face on Ayu's but the my happy feeling gone altogether when immediately after we had finished, Ayu told me "
kak jam, tadi kak jam repeat benda banyak kali, budak-budak semua bosan" These were her words which still vividly clear in my mind. Words which made me feel like a total failure for few days after that.
I told another collegue about me being a terrible speaker as what Ayu said, when he asked me about my presentation at UNITEN. He eventually really made me happy when he said repeatation is good and should be done in presentation - it will not make the students bored but on the contrary, make them understand better. Even Steve Jobs repeated things many times. He wondered why Ayu said such blunt, bias and jugdemental remarks to me. How did she know that the students were bored? Was her presentation that perfect?
I began thinking what he said. First, I looked back at Steve Jobs presentation which I have the full version of his speech. True enough, even in his first few minutes of his speech (the one that we used in our introduction), he had repeated his points. Then I searched in Public Speaking book ( ispeak by Paul Nelson, Scott Titworth and Judy Pearson-McGraw Hill 2010). Confirmed on page 191 & 192, they stressed the importance of repeatition in Public speaking as "
it has striking effects... ...". Now I wonder why Ayu said those harsh words to me.. I started to reflect back. Frankly, I saw 3 things that I dont think are good and proper in her presentation which are quite embarassing for me to say here. I will remember those three things as something which I will not do if I were to present in the future. I guess I'm not going to talk about it because I didnt want to spoilt her good feeling about herself.Unless of course if she ask me (which apparently she didnt)
I also saw students going out of the auditorium (bored?) during my presentation and during Ayu's as well (bored also?). Worst still I saw few lecturers who seated in the first row going out of the auditorium during Ayu's presentation!
But happy to recall that, throughout our 1 hour presentation, only a handful of them gone out of the auditorium without coming back, majority of them stayed glued to their seats, jotted down something attentively and there were few students who met us after the presentation asking for our powerpoints slides giving the reasons that they failed to jot all our points. I can conclude that I learnt something from this wonderful experience - dont look down upon others because we are neither perfect!
4th April 2012 is a day to remember. My collegue, Siti Ayu and I were invited to give a talk to UNITEN students in Muadzam. That was the first time in my life I spoke in front of a strong crowd of about 200 people in a huge, grand auditorium. It's a wow! What an experience I had. The topic was on 'Effective Presentation Skills' - I did the first part for about 40 minutes and Ayu continued for another half an hour.
We rehearsed few times in our college prior to the talk. We rehearsed in front of our collegues and they commented and gave feedback on our performance.
I did have a stage fright at first but as soon as I started, it was gone and I enjoyed presenting my points.
I must say that I was quite satisfied with my performance upon concluding my part and I saw the same satisfied face on Ayu's but the my happy feeling gone altogether when immediately after we had finished, Ayu told me "kak jam, tadi kak jam repeat benda banyak kali, budak-budak semua bosan" These were her words which still vividly clear in my mind. Words which made me feel like a total failure for few days after that.
I told another collegue about me being a terrible speaker as what Ayu said, when he asked me about my presentation at UNITEN. He eventually really made me happy when he said repeatation is good and should be done in presentation - it will not make the students bored but on the contrary, make them understand better. Even Steve Jobs repeated things many times. He wondered why Ayu said such blunt, bias and jugdemental remarks to me. How did she know that the students were bored? Was her presentation that perfect?
I began thinking what he said. First, I looked back at Steve Jobs presentation which I have the full version of his speech. True enough, even in his first few minutes of his speech (the one that we used in our introduction), he had repeated his points. Then I searched in Public Speaking book ( ispeak by Paul Nelson, Scott Titworth and Judy Pearson-McGraw Hill 2010). Confirmed on page 191 & 192, they stressed the importance of repeatition in Public speaking as "it has striking effects... ...". Now I wonder why Ayu said those harsh words to me.. I started to reflect back. Frankly, I saw 3 things that I dont think are good and proper in her presentation which are quite embarassing for me to say here. I will remember those three things as something which I will not do if I were to present in the future. I guess I'm not going to talk about it because I didnt want to spoilt her good feeling about herself.Unless of course if she ask me (which apparently she didnt)
I also saw students going out of the auditorium (bored?) during my presentation and during Ayu's as well (bored also?). Worst still I saw few lecturers who seated in the first row going out of the auditorium during Ayu's presentation!
But happy to recall that, throughout our 1 hour presentation, only a handful of them gone out of the auditorium without coming back, majority of them stayed glued to their seats, jotted down something attentively and there were few students who met us after the presentation asking for our powerpoints slides giving the reasons that they failed to jot all our points. I can conclude that I learnt something from this wonderful experience - dont look down upon others because we are neither perfect!
