On 10 September 2020, 25 SUSS students attended a fruitful Public Speaking Workshop organised by the Student Events Team. The trainer for the workshop was distinguished toastmaster, Jacky Lim, who is an international speaker, public speaking coach and sales specialist who transforms peoples' ability to communicate with greater impact and influence.
During the online workshop, Jacky shared many useful tips with the participants on how to speak off the cuff, what to look out for when speaking virtually and why a Q&A session should not be conducted towards the end of a speech etc. He also addressed the concerns that many people may have regarding between "speaking" and "talking". Speaking generally requires a structure so that people will pay attention to your speech, while talking doesn’t require any structure and one can just speak on anything under the sun.
He also introduced 3 different methods to tackle situations when one is required to speak off the cuff and the approaches are listed as follows:
- Point, Reason, Example, Point (PREP)
- Pendulum
- Story SPA (Story Point Application)
He added that different individuals tend to use different approach for themselves, hence he advised the participants to explore and see which of the approaches suit them better.
The session ended with a nice group photo. From their faces in the photo, we can tell that all the participants were satisfied with the informative workshop. They are ready to put their new found knowledge to practice in their next presentation opportunity. Jacky is a fun and professional trainer who can engage the class fully. We hope to have more opportunities to work with him to bring similar workshops to our students in the future!