Sense of Achievement

I've been teaching the "English Presentation" course for 3 years. During this time each year each of my students in this class has to make a presentation related to either his/her profession or his/her interest to demonstrate how much he/she has learned from the course. In the past few years, I witnessed how attitude could change a person and bring him/her to another level, or could put someone in where he/she used to be without any improvement. All of the changes just happened within one semester, which is the duration of the course. As a teacher, this is what peaks my curiosity and motivates me to fine-tune the way I run this course in the hope that I can help them build their confidence on stage and draw out the best of them.

In the past two weeks, some of them conquered their stage fright and successfully got their messages across even though I could still see their legs and hands shaking. Some bettered their pronunciation and intonation, and sounded more professional. Others spoke English in a more organized and fluent manner than ever before. Instead of looking back at the slides all the time, the most common mistake most people make in a presentation, they spoke by heart and practiced eye contact well. For people whose English abilities are above the intermediate level, they usually have too much confidence and are not willing to spend much time on the dry runs with their presentations. Unfortunately, that ends up with a disaster most of the time because they have to translate whatever comes to their minds simultaneously from Chinese to English on stage, making a presentation unorganized. Maybe some of the audience can't sense that. But as a teacher who has to give lectures every day, I can easily tell the difference between a well-prepared presenter and an out-of-practice slacker. Something like this happened to my class last year and it was a downright let-down to me. However, good thing that this has not happened even once in this semester. Instead, they worked even harder with more creativity and put together whatever skills they absorbed to make their presentations. That really blew me away and gave me the sense of achievement as a teacher.

It takes two to tango. Before the final presentation, in response to their hard work and dedication, I decided to record their presentations and upload them to Youtube so that they could watch their performances on stage more conveniently by themselves. This might sound scary to some students. However, this has proven to be an effective approach to helping them improve their presentation skills because most people don't know what they look like and how they gesture on stage. After all, to see is to believe.

I expect more great presentations to come in the next few weeks before the semester draws to a close. Their devotion really gives me a confidence boost and sense of accomplishment. Some of the graduates told me this course benefited them tremendously, either for their career or confidence building on stage. Hopefully in the future, students who are currently taking this course can feel the same way and really apply those skills into their work or future presentations.