I. English only
during the break
One of our senior members suggests we speak in English only
in the entire 90 minutes of each meeting, including the break time. I personally
believe that this is a good and simple way to show our respect to any members
who don’t understand Chinese Mandarin or Taiwanese.
Again, this is not a mandatory command, but a strong
suggestion.
II. Take notes,
and publish them online
A member suggests publishing our news online, to publicize
and advertise our club.
To me, I believe taking notes is a good way to accumulate
the legacy of this club. Again, this is not primarily for somebody else but for
us. I hope we can build up a friendly environment for every member to share
what they learned in each meeting, as well as in daily lives. Every piece of
information, notes, picture, memories…will become priceless treasure to this
club and every member.
This proposal is mainly for the sectary, VP of Education, VP
or Membership, and VP of Public Relation. Because it naturally is very time
consuming, again, it is not a mandatory command. But everybody is strongly
encouraged to share what they learned from others or their own project. It doesn’t
need to be very formal and perfect in grammar. It's just some casual notes and
another way to practice communicative English.
I set up a blog in Blogger.com, and here is the link,
http://TACLTM8894.blogspot.com/ . We can
share our notes here.
A good thing is that it supports multiple authors. I will
send you a separate invitation email to be an author. Please, regardless you
want to be an author or not, accept the invitation!
III. Action
English
One member suggests to adding a section in each meeting to
share a quote learned in the past week. I personally like this idea and want to
add something. Let’s share some quote from a movie, rather than from a book,
because a quote from a movie involves sound and story behind it, not just some
words.
When I was in China, my favorite educational English TV
program is Action English. In each episode, the presenter extracts 3
conversations from a movie and explains the slang or the cultural background. I
attribute maybe 80% of my speaking English skills to that TV program. I
improved my pronunciations by mimicking the conversations in the movies.
I hope we can have one or two persons do this “Action
English” each time. This section focuses on practicing the story telling
skills, accuracy of pronunciation, and mimicking. As I observe, mimicking
somebody or some scenario is a very useful skill in public speaking, as well as
our daily communication. It can make an otherwise boring conversation very
interesting and funny.
But still, time is a big concern. We don’t want to drag too
long in each meeting. And such a “story telling” section can easily kill too
much time. So I’m thinking of preparing a piece of it to see how long time it
will take. Meanwhile I’m open to all opinions and suggestions.
IV. 3rd speech, unprepared speech
Several members suggest to having a 3rd speech and one
member went further to suggest to having the 3rd speech as unprepared speech.
The member argued that in some occasions we might need to do an unprepared
speech but the current practices can barely help us obtain such skills.
Again, time is a big concern. We might need to cut some
other sections off to have a 3rd speech.
V. Body
language practice, warming up.
We all know that body language is very important in public
speaking. Naturally, we all have some trifle subconscious behaviors. Someone like
playing with their fingers; someone like scratching scalp; and someone swing.
With appropriate body language practices, we can diminish these trifle behaviors,
while cultivating graceful behavior habits.
Many studies show that our behaviors or body languages can
influence our spiritual status. A scientific study was conducted in a group of
job seekers. They had comparable qualifications. The researcher divided them
randomly into 2 groups. The group A was asked to do some simple actions to
extend their bodies, say, standing with both arms spread out. The group B was
opposite, to shrink themselves. Then they were interviewed by officers who had
no idea which interviewee was from which group. The result show strong favor to
the group A. This experiment proves a hypothesis that the behaviors of
extending your body can make you look more positive, active, energetic, and
self-confident. Shrinking yourself might make you look more negative, passive,
tired, and nervous.
Last year I volunteered in my church’s Vacation Bible Study.
Every day is started with all kids doing warming up exercises together. They
were simply hopping while swinging their arms. Then the kids went to classes
like aerated balloons.
To sum up, I believe some warming up exercises before each
meeting can lift up our energy levels. Hopefully the body language practices
can also correct our trifle behaviors and thus have far-reaching meanings. It
might take just 5 minutes. I’d like to
share something I learned in college. It is called “body-rhythm,” derived from
Chinese traditional choreography.
VI. Dressing
color code
My church’s choir adapts dressing color code. We don’t wear
those traditional church cloaks. Every Sunday we have a color code to fit in a
theme. We have mother’s day color, rodeo color, favorite jersey, patriot
color…It doesn’t demand us strictly to wear dress with only the set colors, but
just a hint. For example, say the color is blue, you can wear blue jeans plus
whatever color shirts, or blue strips shirts with khaki pants, or skirts with
blue flowers, or blue ties, or….whatever. The point is to simply have some fun,
and build up some sort of accord.
We can let the decision up to the toast master and let
him/her notify us each Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment