Speech is power

Speech is to persuade

Speech is to convert

Speech is to compel

- Ralph Waldo Emerson-

What is the next level of extrovert? What is the next level of super active? Is that what you call hyperactive? I love to talk, I love to explain, I love to discuss, I love to tell people stories, I love to start a conversation, I love to chit chat, I just can’t be quite. I can’t just stop talking. 

The thing is,

Communication built my character.

I love to learn a new language, especially interacting with new people who have a different language with me. I’m always curious to know many different stuff. As I grew up in a small village, surely I spoke a local language at school, I do speak my national language but it wasn’t enough for sure. I moved quite a lot because of my studies, projects or even work. It gave me some ideas to master a bit of different languages here and there. 

I’ve learned a bit how to survive in a new place, it forced me to be able to communicate well by blending with languages. I always try to make friends with new people I meet. That’s the way of me to increase my communication skills naturally. But still, I had a big problem to talk in front of public. I just couldn’t do it. Heart attack mode on, made me frozen and wanted to pee myself. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.

Public speaking is important. This is a powerful way to express yourself. The first time I saw public speaking performance when I was in middle school. I saw a student from the final year presented her English speech in front of us right after the flag ceremony. That was so cool. I was totally impressed. I wanted to be like that too. But I was pretty sure that I would never make it. As usual, I was so pessimistic. I mean even to speak my mother tongue in front of my classmates I felt I wanted to die as hell. So you can guess how it’s gonna be me speaking English? Impossible.

Not long after that, I was quite surprised of myself to try learning public speaking bit by bit. I really wanted to be able to speak it well in front of people. Actually my intention to learn English was already established when I was in elementary school just because of the Titanic’s soundtrack. When I heard “my heart will go on” on TV, my hear beating went so fast. I fell in love with the language then I really wanted to know more about the language. Since English is not my first language, it was really hard for me to learn it. I tried so hard. My dad helped me to provide English magazines and even he bought me Tom & Jerry DVD series. The best thing was the  Mp 4 with full lists of American songs. But still, it was such a pain in the ass to master the language and speak it properly.

I kept trying. I took English class for my extracurricular. I started to speak English with my roommates at the dorm. I joined some English speech contests. My English was still bad. But I didn’t give up. Graduated from middle school, my English didn’t improve that much I still needed to struggle in speaking. In the senior high school I promised myself at least I could communicate in English well once I graduated my high school. So then I could learn a new language in college. I set the target. I started to established English Club and being so active to practice once a week. Once I joined the student council, I initiated an English day at school twice a week and it also happened in the student dormitory. I  improved step by step and some of my English teachers finally noticed my ability in English was above average and finally I represented my school to join English Speech contest.

It didn’t stop there. College life gave me so many opportunities to improve more. I challenged myself to join the English debate community. I practiced every week. I did everything I could to improve my public speaking. Talked in front the mirror pretended to be a news anchor, talked to my hand, recorded my voice over and over again, I even talked to random foreigners on the road. I participated in several Pecha Kucha presentations in town to beat my fear talking in public. Finally, it was paid off.