Public Speaking

Spent 10 evenings- not all of them fun filled - in learning to speak in Public.

The course was being organized by a Redemptionist Preacher. He spoke with a booming voice when he came to the lectern after the Sunday mass , to talk about the course and well I was taken in by his confidence and decided to join.

To a large extent Fr Frankie( the Redemptorist) followed the learning by doing method. In which we were made to talk on different incidents that touched our lives.

The feedback was critical and immediate and it was upto us to imbibe what ever we could and to incorporate the improvements to our Public speaking.

Some who were more mature or just plain scared gave their best shot. while others just had some fun. Overall got to meet some entirely off beat crowd. Generally I would not have been able to interact with them in the course of my job. Hence a really worthwhile experience.

Made some good friends , and not the least of all a Good contact in Fr Frankie whom we can sound out for any clarifications / doubts on Public speaking.

Fr is extremely knowledgeable , great temperament and fantastic voice and diction.But, more than a trifle quirky.

First he was very particular about alloting everyone roll Numbers. On the very First day He kept asking us to remember these numbers.

Then during every class we used to undertake the exercise of getting new numbers for the sequence in which to speak. And this was not as simple as it sounds. First the numbers were alloted based on seating arrangement, then on any given day he would decide to go only with odd numbers or even numbers. Then either the odd or the even numbered students were asked to speak out their sequence -first odd , 2nd odd , 3rd odd and so on.... And it didnt stop here. Now he used counters - similar to the on es used in Housy to pick a random number - That number becomes the speaker. Then another random number becomes the next speaker. Then another random number - becomes the evaluator.

Confusing ? Well you bet it was. We used to get so confused - that sometimes this counting used to restart.

No wonder our last class went on right upto the dinner bell.

On top of the counting were the Prayers. On a couple of days we got all that was to know about praying Techniques.Later on we came to know that Father was taking aseries of Classes for the seminarians a week after ours got over - so apparently he got it mixed. I guess we could excuse him - he was touching 80..

So, overall a different and very useful experience