An interactive workshop with these full-time students from Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Business Management, Diploma in Mass Media Management. These young learners certainly didn’t stop learning during their school holidays. They came well prepared with their passionate presentations. I was convinced of the clear benefits of getting a dog and a frog as my pet. They are simply too cute to resist!

Within a short span of 2 hours, our focus was to enable the group to discover for themselves the strengths that they already possess; and the little areas which are affecting their effectiveness as a speaker, as a presenter. Interestingly, many of them have used rhetorical devices like asking relevant questions to trigger emotional appeals, before dishing out plenty of facts. They were naturally conversational and comfortable to share what they know like the back of their hands. And their strongest attribute is… they spoke with lots of beliefs.

A few healthy takeaways include the need to slow down their speaking rate, to take a deliberate pause before moving into another fresh point, to reinforce their speech purpose with a strong conclusion, to simplify their slides and to be generous with their eye contact.

Overall, their feedback after the fruitful session showed that we have all learned together a few tips to become more effective communicators:

I learnt many new things throughout this workshop and it has allowed me to identify my flaws and improve on my public speaking skills. The activities were appropriate and enjoyable!

Olsen Bong

The workshop was great fun and I learnt many new things about the nuances of public speaking. The activities were very casual so I didn’t feel pressured at all. 

Cedric Chan