The day broke as a dreary one and the sky was encumbered with solid and mature clouds. Each and every object seemed to be cold with a feeling of gloom. Since many days, the sun even forgot to greet the earth for once a day. The roads and everything around acquired a messy look due to incessant rain. A display of puddles and splashes was out of doors. The view of the urchin cycling away through the road called my attention to it as he slid his bicycle into the puddle deliberately and splashed mud water on the long skirt disrupting the affected gait and style. Relishing the sign of annoyance on the blushed up face, the urchin whizzed past his bicycle with a chortle lifting his face upward. The sight amused temporarily but the fear of facing a new sort of audience on that day crept in my mind again.
The rain started gathering more force along with thunderbolts. Office goers were caught in traffic snarl due to waterlogging here and there and the umbrellas were vying with one another to drip on aligned shoulders in the street. The panorama was viewed from the balcony of the top floor taking occasional sips from warm china cup. The commotion produced by rain and thunder hindered one from receiving the message even uttered a short distance from. Consequently, the mind was disturbed with the thought of how to upkeep the tie with the audience in the class making my words reach to them against such a noisy backdrop.
Such a rainy and messy day deters one from taking an errand outside and propels one to be tethered to home. But the sense of duty caned my sloth spirit to rise and urged me to be ready for the college. Hence, I finished my breakfast hurriedly spreading butter on bread slices and taking some scoops from half boiled eggs. Leaving the house to the care of guests and asking them to relax and feel free, I stepped out of my home.
The cab ran through the road with the hazy view of the foliage receiving the openhanded bounty of the monsoon with bent heads on both its right and left sides. After a journey of about one hour, the cab creaked and stopped at the main gate of the college and I somehow dashed to the staff room daring the rain that was still falling. I remained engrossed in the thought of how to manage the new audience who happened to be from different standards and from different schools till the other teacher was busy with them in her class.
I consulted my watch and saw it was one p.m. and hence I rose to my feet for the class. I looked outside and saw the rain had already started to lose its force by the grace of God. Slowly, slowly the clouds parted away and the sun shone feebly on the silent day. My worries of how to make me audible in the class were rooted out.
When I entered the classroom, felt a calm and quiet, rather a sanctified ambiance with innocent souls almost of equal numbers of both the genders and of different age groups holding the seats. The very first trick that hit me to bring them under my control in the class was to bring all the back-benchers to the first row, where the seats were lying empty. After keeping them close only with a few feet’s distance from me, I tried to tie a knot with them extending them a warm greeting wearing a smile on my face.
It was not my regular class but the one that happened to be under community teaching programme organized by our college. The language that is usually taken up as a tool for teaching the technical students in the college is English. The students under the community teaching programme were both from English medium and vernacular that is Assamese medium schools. Hence, I opted for both the languages to present my thoughts and tried to present them in the easiest possible way considering the age and the standards of the school children. I felt successful because the message that I delivered was easily grasped by all the students and I could perceive that they paid full attention to the class.
My mind leapt with joy because I was able to hook my audience’s attention. I tried to make my message more lucid and interesting presenting the viewpoints in a systematic manner interpolating them with examples that I felt the audience to be familiar with.
I emulated the magician in my attempt to try different tricks to keep my audience spellbound in the class. I tried to purloin the students’ boredom, tickling them into laughter with some humours enlivening my views. I tried to give them a feeling of me as a live person, as if in a show, strutting a few steps on the platform instead of standing or seating stiff in the manner of a cold lifeless statue. But I always felt conscious not to walk long from one end of the platform to the other end while talking because that would create a problem for the audience to follow me and would disrupt their attention. I wanted to make my whole face visible to the audience while talking to them, hence, I kept my hair tied back in a knot – that was another ploy adopted to draw audience’s full attention.
Before, entering the class, confidence stooped low at the thought of how to control the young school children and sustain their attention throughout the discussion. Such a thought germinated because the school children are often graced with the reputation of being naughty, that is but the charm of childhood and its distinction from adulthood. But my well preparation of the topic of discussion with utmost clarity beforehand propped up my confidence throughout the class and never allowed it to droop at any point of time. I with full gusto also tried to be my own without imitating the tactics of any celebrity or of any renowned speaker throughout the course of my speaking. Consequently, I felt myself to be successful in giving my audience a new slice of a show or presentation that aided not to allow their boredom to sprout.
I took maximum care not to allow even a grain of biasness towards a particular group of students to intrude in me while taking the class. Hence, I took the effort to keep all the sections of the audience under my vigil with eye contact with them and even make my voice audible to all of them sitting far in the last row of the hall.
I found that owning the techniques pointed out above in my class under community teaching programme was beneficial for me because that, I felt induced the students to pay their attention duly to whatever I said. They were quite oblivious of the flow of time but I always remembered the time slot allotted to me for my class and attempted to reserve a few minutes for them at the end of the class to answer their queries.
During the question-answer session, a boy of 8th standard, interestingly, raised a question that revolved around the main objective of my class. The boy asked very innocently, “Should we not have eye contact with or avoid that section of the audience that seems to be mischievous or inattentive?” My answer to his question was, “Our topic of discussion is ‘Public Speaking’ today. A speaker is capable to exist, if the audience exists for him/her. Hence, the main objective of a speaker is to target the audience with his/her message and make them able to receive it. In this regard, as good speakers, we should always try to pay equal importance to all the sections of the audience having eye contact with them. The techniques, those I discussed and those I also attempted to follow during my class here with you may be considered as some of the strategies employed during one’s speech or presentation to grip audience’s attention. Once, you are able to arouse audience’s attention to what you are speaking, they will stop being mischievous. The audience often becomes inattentive or mischievous due to halfhearted presentation”. That answer, I thought, was able to satisfy the boy because he responded to it with a smile of contentment.
Therefore, the main motive of a public speaker is to target the audience. That objective requires the speaker to adopt various policies, which may be designated as skills for public speaking, to make the speech engaging and to earn audience’s attention.
…………….Dr. Fathema Begum
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