Giving it a shot!
Hi! I may have mentioned in one of my blogs about how often we hold study sessions in Atrae. From topics about finance to developing or programming theme to just simple and casual lightning talks. We try and make time to gather together, share knowledge and ideas and learn from each other despite our busy schedule.
Then last January, we finally tried holding our very first lightning talk for the members taking the English Program! (with a different purpose though) It’s one form of their output plus it’s a good immersion for them (hear each other speak English,haha) Thanks to my colleague Kuppa, he often conducts lightning talks (in Japanese) he’s also studying English so we thought it would be great to collaborate with him.
So in this blog, I’m going to share how this activity went.
To start, the members were required to give a short English presentation/talk. As this was their first time, we thought it would be good to choose a light topic they could start with. Hence the theme, “ Things I love.” Considering they have different levels, this theme won’t be that tough to talk about even for beginners. Those with high levels can take their presentation to the next level or in a more creative way.
Also, we decided to set a time limit for them not to feel bored since there are quite many of them (14 participants) and each one would give a 3-minute talk in this session!
We didn’t want them to feel nervous, we tried to make the mood casual so they didn’t really have to be seated the whole time, we served some booze and snacks! Beer helps you be able to speak in foreign languages, according to studies right?!
The order of the presenters wasn’t fixed, each turn was randomly chosen. Whew! We were excited to hear what they would talk about. It was also good to get to know what my colleagues are into, hmm..
So, Things I love… can you guess what the members talked about? Among the many topics to choose from, they had to choose just one.
And the list includes… *drum roll*
Playing golf. Red wine. Favorite Places. Libraries. Shoes. People watching. Car race. Strawberries. Playing video games. American Football. Bose earphones/speakers. Bar hopping. Playing tennis. Nature aquarium.
Topics such as playing golf or tennis might sound cliche but the reasons why they like such things were quite interesting!
So the outcome?
The good thing about the way they delivered their talk is that they showed confidence and tried their best to enunciate words clear enough to be understood.
On the other hand, time management and more practice (within the time limit) most of them ran out of time (including myself! haha) and couldn’t fit their topic within three minutes.
and the interesting part for me was… that surprisingly they look like they enjoyed the session and laughed on funny parts. I was happy to see them loosen up a bit and have a good time because that’s just a part of the English language culture.
“ Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” — Benjamin Franklin
It was a fun, interesting first English presentation we had in Atrae. Sure there will be next!
What’s something you love??
Thank you for reading! :)
