Crazy English - My Toastmaster CC #4 speech

I finally finished my CC#4 speech this week. It is almost been a year since my last speech, I feel a kind of awkward.
Actually last week I went to my mentor Robert Fox's club in Richmond Hill did the exact same speech, so this is my second time,
Doing a speech in the second time is a kind of weird feeling.

My speech is about my experiences of learning English, and I got many positive feedbacks, the audiences seemed like my speech, especially I put some humour.
I realized my main problem is the pace, I spoke too fast, need to slow down, need to add more pause. I am not sure if it is because I practiced too much. And when I looked my video, I realized I have so many unnecessary movements,I definitely need to work on it.

Following is the script of my CC#4 speech.


Crazy English

"If you like him, let him learn English, because it is heaven; if you hate him, let him learn English, because it is hell."
Learning English for me is more like going to the hell.

Mr toastmaster, fellow toastmaster and welcome guests, I would like to share my crazy English learning experiences.

I came from China, English is my second language. I started learning English at the age of 9, until I graduated from university when I was 22. After I graduated, I found I got an issue - we call it 'dumb English', it means I could read in English, but I couldn't speak. The reason is we focused more on 'learning' instead of 'practicing'. We had a crazy environment: on one hand, We don't have enough good English teachers, we don't have enough chance to practice speaking, we just focused on grammar, vocabulary,grammar and reading; on the other hand, the whole country is so crazy about the English, not because it is useful in daily life, but because the students have to deal with lots of English tests: when we go to university, when we get degree and when we apply for jobs. So the main reason of learning English is to pass the tests, there is no more time to improve our real English skills.

One of the craziest test I ever had is TOEFL test. TOEFL stands for 'test of English as a foreign language'. It is very popular for the Chinese students, because this is the test you have to pass if English is your second language and you want to apply for an university in North America. To prepare my TOEFL test, I went to an English school in Beijing, That schools is famous for improving your TOEFL score in a short time. they didn't teach your the real English skills, instead they gave your tips. Those tips will help you provide the correct answer even if you don't fully understand the question.For example: in listening part, when you heard a conversation between a boy student and a girl student, the correct answer would be always the girl is better than the boy, because in TOEFL test, the girls are always smarter, working harder, keep the rooms cleaner; while the boys are always silly, lazy and make their room messy.I learned lots of this kind of tips, the thing is to master those tips, I have to do large amount of exercises, I finished 30 - 40 hour audio tapes within 3 months. Unfortunately those tips are useless in reality.

TOEFL didn't help me, I have to try another way: I remembered that was one day in 2001, by chance I heard of an approach, it was so simple but really hard - I called it crazy dictation: when you listen to an article, try to write down every word you heard, leave the blank if you don't know, then repeat listening again and again, until you fill all the blanks. After I gave a try, I realize this is the right way for me, since those blanks gave me the real feedback, once I solved them, then they became my real improvements, no cheating any more. Since then I started the dictation, I listened for 2 years, everyday I spent 2 hours at least. I really enjoy the learning process, because every day I could see my listening skills improving. The dictation was really fun, since when I finally figured out a word after I listened to it for 10 times,15 times and even more, I felt like solving a puzzle game. After 2 years, I finished 20 hours audio tapes. The dictation gave me the break thorough, both my listening and speaking skills got improved, I became more confident, I felt finally I climbed out of the English hell.

This is my crazy stories of learning English, what I learned from it would be follow the basic, step by step, and be patient, working slowly will actually makes you faster. Now I face another challenge - my Toastmaster cc manual! I am going to attack this challenge by using these principles, I hope this time it will lead me to the heaven.
 
Mr. toastmaster.

My Toastmaster Sergeant-At-Arms debrief

Now it comes to the toastmaster year end, and my role as SAA is almost finished. It is time for me have a debrief.

WHY I picked the Role of SAA
Last  year of this time, I just joined the Markham Toastmasters club for a couple month, I was very impressed by the highly structured meeting, I was really curious about what is the behind scene; and as a software developer I am very interested in self-organized team, toastmaster club is a good example of self-organized team, I really want to know more about it; the third reason is I thought SAA is the easiest job, if you can arrive earlier each time, then it is not a problem. Considering these reasons, which droves me to attend the executive team, take the role of SAA.

HOW I did my jobs and my achievements
When I started working, I realized I was wrong, there are lots of work - both visible and invisible jobs. At the beginning, I feel a kind of stressed, and even more the past SAA Hitesh did such a great job, he raised the bar, which made me nervous, how can I match that? My mentor Robert suggested me that just try my best, I will say I did that. I have a passion to do a better job, always try to come to the meeting at 6:30PM, this job needs focus on details, since any small mistake will cause the problem; and you have to keep multi-tasking, which means I need to do some sacrifice, focus on helping others without pay attention to the meeting.  I keep asking for help, Hitesh give me lots of tips, I really appreciate this guy.

What I am proud of myself is I applied what I learned from my career to the SAA role, for example, from Lean I learned value added system and eliminate waste - when I do my job of SAA, I keep asking my self, how can I add more value to the club? how to make it better? From Kanban, I create a Kanban board to visualize the guest list; From continuous improvement philosophy, I keep asking myself, how can I improve the process, make the process better? And from Scrum/Agile, I learned the concept of Servant leadership, which means a good leader is helping other better, removing the impediments which hold them back; all these helped me a lot to do my job.

Overall beside I did my job, I make the following achievements which I believe added the value to the club:
- Created a Kanban board using a software called Trello, which is lot easier to tracking the guest list and collaborate around the executive team;
- We stared recording video for speakers since February this year;
- Setup a facebook group for the club, trying to bring social media into club

Those are nobody asked you to do it, and neither will create benefit to myself, I don't even think about adding them to my CL manual, but I still want to do them? Why? because based on the lean thinking, they definitely add value to the customer - our club members, our job is delight customer, make them happy.

Overall I got positive feedback so far, which means my hard work was recognized.

The Benefit I got
I will say this is a great experience to me, the work itself is a reward. I can apply what I learned to the club, I had the autonomy to make changes, make improvement, and especially when you see your efforts can help others and make some influence, this is a great joy. I really appreciate I have this opportunity to bring my contribution and make our club better. Another great benefit is I have a chance to make friends, they inspire me and help me a lot, which is a great asset and will definitely help me in future.

Something BAD
The only BAD thing to me is I only make one speech this year, and my table topic skills is still not improved. Comparing to other executive members, I fell behind.
The reason is one: SAA job do take more time than I thought, and it will take me lots of time to prepare my speech, there is a conflict between these 2 things, I really admire other executive members, how can they finish 2 things at the same time?


Next step
Next year, I will focus on my speech, trying to finish my CC ASAP! I fell far behind with my fellow members, I need to catch up. I have bigger plans, but I realize the road block is my CC manual, it is the impediment to reach my goals. I really need help, I need mentor, I would really appreciate if anybody can help me.

Workshop notes of "3 Secrets to better Public speaking

Last Saturday on May 25th, I participated the Toastmaster Division A education workshop at York Regional Police Station(Yonge/Major Mackenzie). 2 hour-session only costs me $5.  Now I share the note of the first session - 3 Secrets to better public speaking.
The speaker is Mr. Jacques Brunet,  I like his speech,  and was really impressed the way he delivered the message. Like what he said, all the tips he told are common sense, but they are forgotten truth, we just don't aware them.  Tonight I spent some time to review my notes, and put them in the mind map using XMIND, and share it with you. hope it will be helpful.


Here is the URL to the mind map of this workshop note. http://www.xmind.net/m/2ESL/

My 3rd toastmaster speech

I just finished my 3rd toastmaster speech - "Get to your point".  After a long time break,  finally I got a  chance to practice my speech. This time I tried to reduce my preparation time, because I spent too much time memorizing my notes.

During the speech I think I did well, but I need to have more pause, I spoke too fast,  it took me 5:30 to finish the whole speech, I think it might due to I practiced too much and trying to recite my notes during the speech,  I will try to improve it next time.

I would like to  thank my mentor Robert Fox, he helped me a lot, reviewed my script, which made me rewrite my script almost entirely. I will say without his help, I could not finish my speech successfully.

I also learned from him that it is very important to bring your personal example, since it will bring more connection to the audience,  because people like the concrete examples, and also make it easier to memorize, and more confident for you to tell your own story.

My speech is based on the book "connected"(this is author's video on Ted), and chad fowler's blog post: "be careful of who you work with".

Following is my script.

The power of social network

Birds of a feather flock together, this quote tells us the power of social network.

We all know that networking is important, but how important it is? What is the power behind it?

Today I am going try to answer these questions. 

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmaster, and welcome guests, my name is Steve.

The reason I choose this topic is because I found a good book by chance, it is called - "connected". This is a very inspiring book about social network.

First let me share you a scientific research result coming from the book. The 2 authors studied obesity, and they found that the obesity can spread through the social network, like virus, they give the following striking result:

If your friend is obese, then you have about 45% higher chance to be obese;

If your friend's friends is obese, you have 25% higher chance to be obese, and

If your friend's friend's friend is obese, then  you still have 10% more likely to be obese.

And also obese people are more likely connect to each other, and non-obese people more likely connect to other non-obese people.

This example tells us that human behaviour is contagious, we are so easy to get influenced: if your friend is overweight, you will be overweight, and if your friend is richer, you will be richer; if your friend is happy, and you will be happy.

This is the power of the social network, it shape our lives: it affects our health, wealth and success. it can make you good or bad.

so please choose your friend wisely.

And be careful of who you work with!

Let me share with you my bad work experience, about 10 years ago, I joined a large company,  but I found culture was bad: I saw bureaucracy, favouritism, and ridiculous process, my job was boring and slow moving. I was totally frustrated and not happy, and until one day I decided to leave because I could not stand anymore.

So my lesson is choose your employer carefully, the culture is more important than the salary.

There is another kind of social network we can not ignore, it is the social network over the internet. In the last 5 years, facebook, linkedIn, twitter, become more and more popular, compare to the physical social network, they have some advantages: they spread ideas lot faster and easier, and people are much easier to get influenced. 

For my personal example, I like twitter, I've been using twitter for 3 years, I follow many masters and gurus in the IT industry, I read their tweets, read their books and articles. And the interesting thing is those gurus are usually connected each other, I feel I am in their loops and listen to their conversations, which is definitely helpful for my career. I learned a lot, my mindset was changed, I understand what I need to improve and where I should go in future.

Blog is another powerful tool influenced me a lot, it was a blog post which inspired me to join the toastmaster club, last year this time, I read a blog post, it mentioned if you does not give a good speech, then you are wasting people's time, you are killing people's life! How to make a better public speech? join the toastmaster club, that drive me standing here. 

And I also have my personal blogs, Sometime I got comments and emails from all over the world, thanked me how my articles helped them for their work. Those are very encouraging, which stimulate me to continuing writing blogs. In the internet you never know how much influence you can have, how much help you can give other people!

In conclusion, the social network shapes our lives,it can make you good or bad. We get benefit from a good social network, it is also our responsibility to make it better. It helped me me, and I am sure if can help you as well.

I like to share a quote from this book:"When you smile, the world smiles with you".

Mr. Toastmaster

Review of my toastmaster CC#2 speech

Yesterday I finally finished my second speech, my topic is "Shu Ha Ri - The Japanese way of learning". After speech, I feel very exhausted. Because I am very nervous, and I practice it a lot. It might be easy for other people, but for me it is really difficult. Here I posted my personal review.

My Feedbacks
Positive
 - No notes
 - I looks very confident
 - The speech is clear, simple and easy to follow
 - transition is smoothly
 - The topic I choose is interesting

Constructive, I need to improve
 - Need more eye contact, I ignore the left side of the audience
 - My feet move back and forth, which is distracting, I understand it because I was nervous during the speech, and focus too much on recalling my script, so I can not cover other issues, this needs more practicing
 - more eye contact
 - need humorous
 - need quote for opening and ending.

How I choose the topic
 My criteria to choose a topic are:
  - 3-5 points
  - can be fit within 5 - 7 minutes
  - can bring value to audience

I chose Shu-Ha-Ri because it fits the above criteria: it has only 3 points, it will really new to the audience. Also it is my interest, I like to collect the learning model, Shu-Ha-Ri is the simplest one to fit the 5-7 minutes speech. And I feel it would be an interesting topic: the audience will learn some Chinese characters, and learn about martial art principles. And finally I will add examples to using this in the toastmaster learning, which will bring connection to the audience, and this topic will help them to apply it into their own learning.

Preparation
I will the hard part is preparation. It took me at least 2 weeks to prepare this speech. It is a long time, so I still don't know if it is worth doing like that. I got struggle to write the script, gradually I realize that spoken English is quite different with the written English, because when I write it down, I feel good, but when I read it, it just feel weird, so I modified a lot. Also I struggled to shrink the content to fit it into 5-7 minutes, I have to balance different situation, and cut my favourite part. Finally I realize that to fit within 7 minutes, my content has to be around 600 words. The whole process is very discomfort for me. But I will say I tried my best, because I want to bring the value to the audience.

Making the speech
Comparing to the preparation, doing speech seems lot easy. But I was still nervous before the meeting. I can feel I am still nervous during the speech, I was still not comfortable to speak in public. That was why people saw me move back and forth randomly, because I did that unconsciously. But in general they all said I looked very confident, that was because I did not use notes. Anyway this is a great experience, it seems this 7 minutes were worth all my hard works.

Summary
This speech is a great experience for me. I think I tried my best, and I delivered my message to the audience, and they like it. Also this speech exposed my ignorance for the public speech, all the issues were I never aware before. I also learned the difference between spoken English and written English. The biggest thing I want to improve next is how to shorten my preparation time, since it interrupted my so many other plans. And I really enjoy reading the evaluation from my club members. They are really helpful, I really appreciate that, I feel what I get is a lot more than I contributed. This will force me to bring excellent topic in future.

Update some more thoughts
My evaluator suggested me to use a quote to make the opening stronger, actually I thought about it, but I just could not find a good one, today I found a Chinese proverb:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

So the opening like this:
A Chinese proverb says:"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". Today I am going to show you a different way of learning, which will help you learn more effectively.

Is that sounds better?


P.S. my notes of the speech


Shu-Ha-Ri, the Japanese way of learning

Mr. Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and welcome guests, my name is Steve.

Today my topic is about learning. Learning is very important for us, we need to keep learning, also we need to learn how to learn, to make our learning more efficient. Now I am going to introduce you a learning model, it is called Shu-Ha-Ri.

Shu-Ha-Ri is a concept coming from Japanese martial art. It describes the 3 stages from beginner to master.

These 3 Chinese characters are used in Japanese, and pronounced as "Shu Ha Ri" in Japanese.

This is Shu, it means “to follow”

This is Ha,  it means "to break",

This Ri, it means “to transcend”.

So roughly Shu-Ha-Ri means: First follow, second break, and finally transcend.

Next I will explain this model in details, and try to show you how to apply it in our toastmaster learning.

First in Shu stage, the martial art student is a beginner, he will copy his mentor's movement, he follows the rules precisely without modification. Shu implies loyalty, which means the student should follow one instructor, stick with one path, and focus on one technique. In this stage, the student only needs the clear and detailed instructions; he does not need to learn the theory.

In terms of toastmaster learning, if you are a beginner, you are in the shu stage, you have the manual, you got a mentor.  you need to follow the manual precisely, And you need to follow your mentor, and focus on one technique each time.  For my personal example, my mentor Robert gives me lots of help, especially this time he suggested me NOT to use slides right now, I should focus more on the speech only, this is great,  I really appreciate that , thank you Robert.

The goal in Shu stage is to let the student learn the fundamentals. If he achieves this goal, then he can go to next level, which is Ha stage.

In Ha stage, the student knows the fundamentals, but he needs to go deeper, he needs to understand the principles and theory behind the rules. he starts questioning the rules, reflects everything he learned. He applies the rules to different situations, he will modify them to make adaption. He also will explore different paths, and collect different techniques.

If you are ha level toastmaster, you will do the same thing: you need to go beyond the manual, you might follow different mentors, try different paths and learn different techniques.

During Ha stage, the student will gradually transform what he learned into his own experience.  And finally he will enter the Ri stage.

 In Ri stage, the student becomes a master. He totally abandons the rules, what he learned becomes his second nature. He will follow his own instinct, he moves naturally, spontaneously. He is very creative, and he has the freedom to do anything without limitation. The biggest difference between beginner and master is that the master follows his intuition, while the beginner follows the rigid rules.

The same thing is for toastmaster. If you are ri level toastmaster, you don't rely on the manual any more, you rely on your own instinct, you speak naturally and you are fully free to express yourself.  You are the real master.

Now I want to make a quick survey,  How many of you think you are a shu level toastmaster? Please raise your hands.

Are there any ha level toastmaster?

Are there any ri level toastmaster?

Now you know about what the Shu-Ha-Ri is. It is a learning process,  It is simple and powerful, please try to apply it in your own learning.

Mr. Toastmaster

My ice breaker speech in Toastmaster club

This Tuesday, I finished my Ice-Breaker speech in the toastmaster club. I was inspired by Dr. Nick's blog post - "How to stop killing people with your public speeches".  The club I joined is club No. 4780, Markham Village club. In my first club, I talked about myself, and career and why I want to join the club.

Following is the text of my speech.

My Journey to Mastery

Mr. Chair, fellow toastmasters and welcome guests. 

My name is Steve. This is my first speech in the club. I feel so excited, since it means I will start a new journey, a journey of challenging myself and improving myself.

I would like to talk about myself, about my career, and why I am standing here.

I came from China. I was born in a province called Inner Mongolia. It is in the north part of China. I stayed there until I was 18 years old, then I went to Beijing for college, after graduation, I worked in Beijing until I moved to Canada later. My first job was working for China Aerospace Corporation as an engineer, now I am still really proud of having this experience in my life. And also I met my wife during that time.

Seven years ago my wife and I immigrated to Canada. Last year we got our first kid, my son Andy was born, now he is 14 months old, he give us so much fun, I love him so much.

About my career, I am a software developer; currently I develop applications for mobile phones. I’ve been a programmer for almost 20 years. When I look back, I will say for my first 10 years, I was an average developer; since my second 10 years, I started to know about the software craftsmanship movement. That really changed my self. It is about how to become a professional developer; it is about raising the bar of your job: not only write working code, but also write well-crafted code. It has principles, strategies and disciplines. Programming is like martial art, you need constantly to improve your skills; you need to keep practicing your skills. I really love this idea and I started to follow that philosophy, I learned a lot, gradually I can feel I get changed, change from an average developer to a professional developer, but I know there is a still a long way to go to become a master. I set my career goal to be a master; my career path will continue focus on technology.

But my mindset was changed due to my failure in my former company. About 3 years ago, I realized that the company has lots of issues: too many defects, projects always delayed, people always have to work over time. I got tired of working like that way, so I decided to stand out and push some changes: I talked to my manager, lobbied my colleagues, trying to bring the concept of craftsmanship and new methodology to the company. To my surprise, none of my suggestions was accepted; I did not get many positive feedbacks. I was frustrated because I thought those good ideas inspired me and should inspire others as well. But reality is totally different. I got stuck because I don't know what I need to do next. I realized that my vision was different with them, so I left the company 2 years ago.

Since then I tried to figure out why it is so hard to make people change. I started to understand that only have the good information is not enough; more important is delivering the message. You need to find a strategy, in some cases you need to be a good translator, transform the message to your audience in their languages. Based on my failure, I realize the importance of inspiring people, so I adjust my career goal: along my journey to become a master, I also want to be a coach, I want to tell other people their are better ways to develop software, I want to inspire more and more developers to follow the software craftsmanship. I believe this will be more valuable and more meaningful.

Based on the new goal, I realize I do have blind spots: my communication skill needs to be improved. I need to know how to inspire people, motivate people, and influence people. This is the reason why I am standing here.

Now I start my journey to become a toastmaster, I believe this journey is part of my long journey – the journey to become a master and a coach, I hope the toastmaster club will help me moving toward my final goal.