Today is the first day of new term. During the first class of English Public Speaking II, the tutor YU Jianqing gave out an mini-speech topic:
We should / should not have English Public Speaking II class?
This is a open question, as the tutor has provided two choices for us. However, when we answered it, it did not look like a open question. Mostly, classmates answered in two ways.
1) Yes. This was my answer too. When looking at this topic, I just thought that, if I answered with “no”, maybe the tutor would think that I was not willing to continue this course, and he would give me a bad grade for this course. As a result, I answered this question with a “yes” immediately. Then, I started to figure how to make a speech with a “yes”. I continued to think about how to prove myself that the answer should be YES. Then, I gave a one-minute speech about the importance of this course.
2) No. It seemed that they had their own opinion. However, most of them just wanted to be special. In their speeches, they did not give any persuasive reasons of cancelling this course.
In conclusion, most of us, including myself, have not our own thoughts. The same situation also happened during MaD Conference. Last January, I went to Hong Kong to participate MaD Conference. During the conference, the organizers asked the participators to hand in a feedback form. But most of the mainland participators, also including myself, did not hand it in.
Where is my OWN thoughts? As a English-majored student, what I really need to study, is to build my own thoughts. In western countries, the own thoughts are the most valuable things in the public speaking.
And this is the REAL and MOST IMPORTANT reason of taking English Public Speaking II.
Created by Perry Huang