Brandon Learning Centre: British Education - process, preparation and practicalities

Every speech has the potential for disaster; you lose your train of thought, get distracted or (God forbid) fall off the platform. Last week during my annual Cantonese speech opening the Helping Hand Cookie Day, I managed to commit the first two sins but not, fortunately, the third. What do you do when you are standing on a stage in front of an audience and all goes wrong? Option one is to turn and run off the stage with the result that, for the rest of your days, you will remember the moment and cringe. Option two is to make the best of it, catch your breath, aplogise to the audience and carry on. This is the option I chose. Of course I was mortified but I did manage to pick up, apologised for my rotten pronounciation and rounded off my speech with a small shred of dignity intact. Later, I spoke to someone who had been in my audience and hadn't realised that anything had gone wrong. In an ideal world, every speech would be perfect. In the world we live in, this may not b

The art of public speaking was developed by the Ancient Greeks. Speeches were not approached casually but carefully crafted paying strict attention to the rules of rhetoric. Aristotle dedicated an entire book to the topic, imaginatively entitled "Rhetoric." We are so lazy these days that the thought of trawling through classical literature to find inspiration fills most of us with dread. So much easier to buy one of those fabulous airport books with catchy titles promising instant public speaking skills in ten easy lessons, right? Wrong. Why waste your time on pale imitations when you can go direct to the source? I taught presentation skills to a class of fifteen year olds who not only grasped Aristotle's concepts immediately but also identified examples they had encountered. Bear in mind that this was a class of Cantonese speakers who were operating in English. Impressive. Aristotle on credibility: "Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when

Every year, I stand on a stage in a shopping mall and give a speech in shocking Cantonese. Why? Not because I want to be a source of general amusement for passing shopppers or because I think that it is fair to inflict my poor language skills on innocent passersby. I do it because I am on the board of Helping Hand (www.helpinghand.org.hk) a charity that looks after the poorest elderly in Hong Kong. And there are two links to this piece. Firstly, public speaking related... When you are speaking in a different language, one thing to bear in mind is that the phrasing you add naturally to pieces in your own tongue may not apply to the second language. You may want to think about getting a native speaker to read your piece to give you the chance to listen to their phrasing and pauses. Even better; get two opinions. Second link: we take and therefore we need to give back. In Hong Kong, the public support for charities is inspiring. If you have enjoyed reading my ideas, please can you do some