Mind My English 2 - Achieving My Dream

Wow... it has been a long time since I blogged here last time. Busy with work, kid (err...got one kid but feel like got ten?) and tv.

I just read back my posting in Mind My English 1 and I realize that I need to continue my effort to mastering English. Actually, for the past 3 months, I had attended Public Speaking Course in Islamic International University Malaysia in PJ. The classes were over and I'm very happy that I get to know new friends, tips in public speaking and motivation in improving my English proficiency. I'll be "graduating" on the 14th December 2006. Speaking about this, ooohh..ooohh.. we need to do a performance on that day, and we still don't practice a thing.

Attending this course makes me realize that I actually need exposure eventhough I thought that I didn't like to have contact with other people. I'm so excited that I have new friends including three Chinese girls. I just know that actually I like multicultural friends! Meeting with new people is like a supplement to my boring life in the office. I wonder why some people said that we don't need to go for courses because we can learn by ourselves. We'll never know what we can get from a class or a meeting or a talk. We can get more than the course content itself especially when we have a good talkative and cheerful lecturer like Puan Raja Zarina :). How I wish I could be like her, doing the job that she loves and she gets the satisfaction eventhough she said the pay can't get her rich. For me, being rich will not necessarily make us happy but feel that we are rich and be able to help other people that matter.

When we have a good talkative and cheerful lecturer, we get more than public speaking tips in the class. We get career tips, love tips, communication tips, salary tips, how to impress your boss tips, multi-national vs government body tips and live-life-to-the-fullest and life-is-already-complex-so-don't-make-it-more-complex tips. My mind seems shrinking eventhough I've been working here for more than 6 years. My mind thirsts of knowledge and I need more and more of it to make it expands and useful. It is so boring that my head is only full of PHP, Drupal, Linux and only the technical things. I need to be more progressive in terms of leadership, people skill, self-esteem and all non-technical skills. I'm so happy that I've finally found out that I have the right, professionally, to speak up my idea or to tell other people in business without beating around the bush.

This public speaking class motivates me alot. As I stated earlier, about beating around the bush, I'm one of a kind that don't know how to write or speak so nicely especially to write a letter to our clients. My colleagues always give negative comments to my business letters and I always don't have the confidence to write something like beautifully passive sentences. It's either because I don't have that much vocabularies or I don't like the readers to be misunderstood. From this class I learn that it is better for us to get to the point so that our audience know what we wanna talk about. This goes with the letter too. So, I feel more confident now, at least a little bit. I just need more practice and more vocabularies in order to get a better English. My lecturer always asked us to practice and practice and we must make sure that we practice correctly, otherwise nothing will change. She also said that it is useless if we can speak fast like a native speaker but our audience can't grap the words and ideas. Thus, I believe it is not a sin to speak English with Malay accent and speak a little bit slow as long as the articulation and the language are right. Most importantly is the way I deliver my speech and I know it needs a lot of practice. Even the best speaker in the world needs practice and I was told (and I believe that) this skill can be cultivated. From what I've mentioned earlier, it really shows that the public speaking class can motivate and boost my self-esteem.

Getting ourselves go to the class and making sure we get involved in the class are the key points that attending a course is not a waste of money. Besides that, it also kills the negative thoughts that we can learn something by ourselves or from the net. NO.. not everything can be learned from the Internet or books only. Reading articles about other experiences or tutorial are not the same with hearing the experiences and tutorial from the experts themselves. I really...really hope that my friends, the tips and the knowledge and the motivation that I got from the course are forever attached with me and benefit my life and everybody's.