APU Student Workshop - Effective Public Speaking

The monthly APU Student Workshop organised by Asia Pacific Language Centre (APLC) was held on 31st July, 2015 in Asia Pacific Language Centre (APLC) @ South City Plaza (SCP) from 2:30pm to 4:30 p.m. The workshop entitled “Effective Public Speaking – It’s not as hard as you think” aimed at building participants’ confidence and fluency in speaking in public. In addition, participants were introduced to different types of presentation skills, presentation methods and presentation language. It was attended by both APLC and APU Degree students.

The workshop started off with an ice-breaking session where participants introduced themselves to the group. It then moved on to a discussion session on selected topics. In one session, a participant was overcome with emotions while presenting, and this created empathy among the others.  The next session’s main activity which was designed to help improve impromptu speaking skill was the main highlight of the day. During this session, each group member had to collaborate with each other to maintain the flow of conversation using selected vocabulary. From this session, it was obvious that some participants have a natural born talent to speak in public while others were picking up the skills at an amazing speed while enjoying the laughter and funny banter.

In the end, the participants were taken through a series of slides and explanation on how to organise their presentation and pitfalls to avoid in making a public speech. Through written feedback, most who attended have requested more speaking sessions such as this to be held, and of course APLC strives to make sure this is done.