Fili’s world

The Toastmasters concept is something that I’ve heard about before, usually from American flicks, but I’ve never seen it in action. Toastmasters, for promoting international leadership, is an extremely popular student club here in Tainan, and rumor has it that Tainan alone has 5 different Toastmasters clubs in different institutes. The Taiwanese Toastmasters club is more about gaining public-speech abilities and using English, than it is anything else, and it’s admirable to see the Taiwanese students struggle through this.

The format is formal and simple. Presentations, or projects, are given by club members on different levels, starting from C1 as a self-introduction through higher C’s focusing on improving your body language, voice usage etc. There are 4 parts, I think, first one being about telling jokes, the second about making presentations, the third about introducing new members and socializing and the forth about a formal evaluation. Everything is checked for time and ranked and there are some formalities like shaking hands when coming on stage or leaving or some “conclusion” that needs to be made after every speech that I find extremely misfit how I perceive Taiwanese student culture.

Anyways, the other day, the students were throwing a language exchange party, and against my better judgement I decided to come. It was actually loads of laughs, in a naive sort of way. I’ve attended a few other Toastmasters meetings and I’m still toying around with the idea that maybe I’ll try that with some Chinese speeches. We’ll see.

Here’s a bit from the language exchange party. Not much of language exchange going on, but, it might be a good way to meet someone who you will eventually have language exchange with.

I love their energies. It’s inspiring.