CC2 - Organize Your Speech - Practice... Practce.. Practice...

Practice... Practice... Practice....

May 2nd, 1994… 9 pm… Chennai Central Railway station… heavily crowded with passengers.. very noisy… A young man in his late 20s running breathlessly to catch Navajeevan express to Gujarat.  Just before boarding the train, his eyes caught the attention of something at a platform side stall.. He stopped running, his eyes firmly glued to that thing which he noticed.

Good Evening Toastmasters and guests.

 “Learn Hindi in 30 days” This is the book that caught the attention of the young man. And the young man is yours truly… Rajesh Narayanan. I was traveling to Gujarat. However, I didn’t know Hindi. I thought I can master the language easily. Throughout my 36 hours of journey, I completed the whole book in a single stretch.  I got down at Ahmedabad station.  With my rejuvenated confidence, I wanted to do an experiment to check my newly learned language.

I went to the coffee shop straight across the station.  There was a small girl in the shop busy preparing coffee/tea for customers. I ordered “Ek coffee Beatteay”.  I gave Rs. 5 to the girl.  She took only 50 paise and returned the remaining amount.

I was wondering and amazed.  A coffee for a 50 paise! I found it was very cheap when compared to  Chennai whereas it was Rs 2 in Chennai at that time.  I quickly criticized the cost of living in Chennai and started appreciating Ahmedabad.  I went to the extent of calculating my potential saving in salary due to lesser cost of living. Five minutes passed, 10 minutes passed, I did not get my coffee.  I do not see any sign of getting my coffee at all.

I wanted to fight with the little girl in Hindi which I did not know very well.  Now I was in a catch 22 situation where I wanted to argue with the girl in Hindi which I barely learned. I was angry with myself for being in a helpless situation.  Lost all the patience in waiting, I was about to shout... That was when, I saw a dinghy little thing waiting for me.  I mysteriously look around to find if someone was watching me and took the “COFFEE BITE” and left the place quietly.

I stood away from the shop at a distance, then I laughed at myself and the funny incident.  I relished my coffee bite.  Later, I realized the girl understood “Coffee Beateay” as “Coffee Bite” from my broken Hindi.  Yes, my first Hindi experiment was a flop.

It took me nearly 18 months to master the language. In that process, I identified three strategies to effectively speak a new language

1. Refer to books once in a while, but practice more often
2. Speak at every opportunity – be it a coffee shop, or with a colleague or with a neighbor
3. Continuously improve and fine-tune the learning

Firstly, I realized that learning through books alone was not going to help me anymore.  It was like reading a book to learn swimming. It may give you the courage to jump into the water, but will not get you far. More importantly, there were no colloquial words in the books.  (Do not use the words such as “Side track”…Most of the times, audience wouldn’t know that you are side tracking unless you say so..) For example, if you are in an unknown place and people are speaking unknown language in front of you and laughing, you wouldn’t know whether they are talking good about your or making fun of you. 

Whenever I run into unknown words, I write them in a notebook, memorize it by heart and practice it frequently.  I practiced it daily by repeating the same words again and again.  With that I was able to get to the context of any conversation quickly.   I even made lots and lots of friends with my butler Hindi. “Necessity is the mother of invention” is true.

Secondly, I forced myself to be in situations where I had to speak Hindi.  For example, I voluntarily started conversation with native Hindi speakers who did not know Tamil or English. 

Thirdly, by continuous fine tuning my learning, I learned to speak in Hindi in a year.

I see a lot of similarities between what we are doing in toastmasters vs. what I did in the past to learn Hindi. To speak effectively in TM, I am going to follow same three methodologies which I used to speak Hindi.

I had read a number of books about public speaking, however only after coming to toastmasters and standing up in front of audience, I realized that it is always a nightmare and needs lots of practice.

Jack Elliot, the world speaker who won the international speech contest this year in Vegas mentioned in his interview that it took him 36 years and 400 contests to win the world title.  Let me repeat, it took 36 years of practice in Toastmasters.

To master the art of public speaking, one has to put lot of efforts to do it effortlessly.

In a way, an international speaker is seeded in all of us.  All we need to do is nurture it and practice it in all available opportunities in weekly Toastmasters meetings and in various roles on a regular basis.

To sum up,

The journey of thousand miles begin with a single step. Each step provides you an opportunity to perform and learn. In a nutshell, It is all about Practice... Practice... Practice....

Over to you TMOD.