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For my Chinese readers, here is the blog of the man who beat me (2nd place) in the Shanghai speech contest: http://peterwan19.blog.sohu.com/ (It’s mostly in Chinese.) You may have seen my speech on You Tube. Well, his speech was better! Remember, if he can do it, so can you.
Okay, here’s something a little different… I joined a speech contest at my local Toastmasters Club in Beijing a few weeks ago. (Toastmasters is a public speaking club. There are more than ten thousand clubs in the world, probably at least one near you. Anyone over the age of 18 can join, so find a club and check it out!) I won the club contest, then last week I was able to compete against the winners of three other clubs in the same area. You can see the winning speech here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jbiKV9lTY
I think I improved this speech a bit compared to when I gave it at the club contest, but I want to improve it more because next Saturday I will compete again, this time against speakers from clubs all over the north of China. I’ve heard there will be some very good speakers there, so I don’t think the above speech is good enough. For one thing, I must improve on my body language - too many pointless gestures. I think, because this is meant to be a humorous speech, that maybe I should exaggerate more. And finally, I should probably find a way to strengthen my message, “mistakes are good, even though they feel bad”.
So, take a look at the video and if you can think of any ways I can improve my speech, let me know. At the very least, I hope you’ll have a bit of a laugh…
