Rehearsing being a good loser - when online

Braddell Heights Advanced on learncool.sg

Nowadays those of us responsible for organizing events have to be careful to keep up the morale of contestants, whether they win or lose.

We need a set of ten commandments for contestants in speech contests.
Each contestant must rehearse saying something positive in the interview whilst waiting. eg 'I did my best'. or, I made some mistakes but I have learned so I will do even better next time. The other contestants were great, just having them competing kept me on my toes.'

On winning the winner should have rehearsed a speech to the others, maybe: You had a great prop, I loved your line, ...'

The runner ups and not place should have a rehearsed speech for the winner.

All the runners up and not placed speakers will have somebody who thinks they should have won. That is why you have five or more judges.

At the Braddell Heights meeting online, 29 April, 2020, I was able to speak to the winner of the Division S contest, Eliya, who I have known for some time. He was at the Braddell Heights Advanced meeting before the contest as well as the meeting afterwards.

After the Area S Division contest the previous Saturday, one contestant told everybody she felt she had failed, even before the results were announced. 

Her anxiety before hearing the results reminded me of two cases where students had committed suicide before hearing their A level results. If only they had waited a day, they would have discovered they had succeeded.

Exams, students. Adults at Speakers' conferences must be more resilient. Hm I heard that a new member of one of the clubs I visit regularly in London had committed suicide. In early 2020. No warning signs

So, a few weeks later, I did not feel i could just shrug when I did hear warning signs.

It was not the failure, but the fear of failure, which tormented them.

But even if you do fail to reach first place, logically if one person is first out of 10, 9 out of the ten contestants must be disappointed.

I related the story at the meeting of the film I had seen about the finals in the USA.

 I asked first place winner Eliya how he felt about winning and losing.

He said he recalled a previous head of Division S advising, "Enjoy the journey. If you are not enjoying it, no point doing it."

He said, "It's the journey, not the destination."

We often hear two sayings:

It is not failure. it is a learning experience.

The other is the popular saying attributed to Edison, the inventor whose persistence benefits us all today with light bulbs.

His saying was, "I have not failed 1000 times. I have found out 1000 ways of not doing it.' 

So that is the moral.

Next time I shall rehearse everybody reacting to good and bad news and rehearsing their pre-results chat.

Author

Author, Author! About the Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. (Not related to the actress.)

Author of twenty books including: Quick Quotations; Who Said What When.

See books and profiles on Lulu.com and Amazon, such as Wedding Speeches & Toasts. Also watch videos on YouTube.

See other posts on singers, statues, languages and destinations.

If you want to learn to speak the Queen's English, or Received Pronunciation. join me at my online toastmasters club,

Braddell Heights Advanced. Wednesdays, 7-9 Singapore time which is seven hours ahead of London, England.

I am also a member of

Singapore Online.9-12 pm, Singapore time, Fridays. I am also a member of

Tampines Changkat Advanced.

Harrovians, London.

Toastmasters International Find a Club

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=upSEBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=quick+quotations

lulu.com/shop/angela-lansbury/who-said-what-when/paperback/product-21713991

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How To Get A Job Teaching English In Singapore - and practise your demo lesson

What you need depends on which age you wish to teach.

I wanted a teaching job with flexible hours.
1 I wanted to be free evenings and weekends. That meant I could not teach at Berlitz which wanted me to be free to do a one to one lesson any time.
2 I wanted to be able to travel with my family and go back to the UK from Singapore to see my parents and inlaws and son at Christmas and in the Easter and summer.

I found the solution was to teach a short course in a private school. The courses would be four to eight weeks all day, 9-5 Monday to Friday.

Time Spent Marking
However, I also needed to mark homework books and essays in my own time, and correct exams done on Friday afternoon to be given back to the pupils first thing on Monday. That meant three hours of (unpaid) time over a weekend.

One solution to the homework marking problem is to read out the answers in class and get pupils to mark their own work. If you don't trust them, and want an accurate assessment of what they have understood and learned, you can ask them to swap books with the person sitting in front or behind.

Another solution is to set them working on exercise two silently, whilst you mark exercise one. They might need two exercise books, so that you can mark book 1 whilst they write in book 2. Alternatively, to share the work intruction and test books and ask them to write asnwers on loose leaf sheets with their name and class and date at the top.

The school might provide books, or work sheets which can be copied on their copier. If there are many copies avialable you can quickly choose and pick up the batch.
However, you may need to arrive early, wait for others to finish their long  to print out materials for the class.

How to get experience as a teacher to establish my credentials when seeking work as a business trainer? You can start giving workshops at Toastmasters. I would suggest join a club or two dlubs, even four or six, go through their pathways programme which includes interactive sessions.

When I wanted a work permit for a private school I had to provide my university degree certificate, the orignal, not a photocopy.

Before starting work I had to take an x-ray to show that I was clear of TB which is catching. You can't have teachers with TB talking and shouting, breathing and spitting over pupils.

The school typed out a simple short letter saying they needed a teacher urgently for a class starting that day. They sent me by taxi to the work permit department. Half an hour later I cought that taxi back to the school with my work permit. Half an hour later I was teaching my first class.

This year another teacher, a neighbour in Singapore, suggested I might like to work in state schools as a relief teacher, which he had done after retiring.

You apply through the MOE, Ministry of  Education.

Another friend of mine has applied four times to be a teacher of music and English.

When she was placed on the shortlist and called for an interview, her interview was in three parts. The first part was a five minutes demo lesson. One one occasion the adult judges acted like children in the audience being obstreporous to test classroom control.

Next a question about how she would react to challenges.

Finally the general interview on why you want to teach and your short term and long term goals.

I suggested that she should do a demo lesson at Toastmasters and get feedback. This would be useful for both teaching and interviews.

Toastmasters international clubs providing training in public speaking and a chance for you to rehearse a presentation you are doing elsewhere.

Useful Websites
https://www.moe.gov.sg/careers/teach/how-to-apply/teaching-schemes/relief-teaching
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Learning Italian Tips

Learning Italian Tips

1 Make your own vocabulary notebook (use an inexpensive address book which has alphabetical tabs - see previous post on DIY diaries)

2 Ask an Italian restaurant for a takeaway menu; copy words with translations

3 Add google translate to your favourites bar or an icon for a translation service

4 Follow a conversation course such as Earworms - a short form of the Berlitz listening method

5 Buy a pocket phrase book to browse at bus stops, stations, or while waiting on the phone to busy companies listening to music

6 Buy a children's vocabulary book such as Usborne's for fun. Cheap alternative - read multilangage instruction books, comparing the Italian and the English.

7 Buy or enrol in a proper course preparing for a first level exam to stick to a system and learn sentence structure, past, present and future tenses.

8 Plan a set time of day for each day's learning and homework.

9 Take an exam - even if you are likely to fail - because a) it will make you work harder and b) give you the genuine excuse to tell others that you can't help them but must study.

10 Listen to Italian songs, noting the words, watch Italian films, reading subtitles and hearing pronunciation.

1 In an Italian restaurant sit near the bar or waiter's gathering place, doorway or wherever you can hear them talking to each other. If you hear a word repeated, write it down.

12 Look at a map of Italy and copy down place name words you already know or can work out, such as sea, bridge, square, church, museum, hotel, taxi.

13 In Italy or a tourist board, take the Italian and English versions of maps and brochures and compare them.

14 In airports and hotels take the Italian and English versions of brochures on hotels, museums and attractions and compare the words.

Angela Lansbury BA Hons author, travel writer and photographer, speaker.

Semi-retired from teaching English language and literature O level, A level, English as a second/foreign language and foreign languages.