Many people are afraid of public speaking for many reasons -- they don’t want to be the centre of attention, to be seen as exceptional, or to be ostracized for making a mistake, and many more. That’s why in Toastmasters, the least popular role in my club is that of a Grammarian. You are asked to speak extemporaneously and to give the previous speakers feedback on their usage of the English language even though you are not an expert yourself. It’s freaking difficult when you think of it like that.
As the self-assigned interim VP for Education, I knew that it would be difficult to convince people to take the Grammarian role. I’m not that enthusiastic about it myself but someone has to do it. And I knew that I have to make it seem less scary because there are a lot of newbies in Impact TMC. So tonight, I volunteered to be the Grammarian and went on to make a fool of myself and commit every mistake I could possibly make. Partially planned and partially accidental.
Grammarians usually list down all the grammatical errors committed. I honestly do not remember the rules of grammar. I’m just used to speaking in conversational English so I can usually tell when something sounds wrong. That’s exactly what I did! I thought I did well enough when I took notes and reported the “litter” or the grammatical errors. However, I made one mistake. Someone named Prince said “I’m worn-in” and I said it should be “worn, worn-out, or worn down.” After my speech, he went up to me and showed the result of his Google search that said “worn-in” is correct! I was wrong! Guess what, I didn’t die. It was embarrassing but in a funny way.
Next, Grammarians usually take note of the gems, or as I called it tonight - the loot. This is where I was supposed to commend the speakers for coming up with beautiful, quotable lines, for using figures of speech, and other exceptional ways that the English language was used. I fully intended to do that BUT THE SPEAKERS SPOKE LIKE PARATING NA ANG MGA PARAK. In short, I was not able to write down the quotable quotes. I did a terrible job at writing down the loot but that shouldn’t stop me from acknowledging what they did well. So I admitted my dilemma, tried my best to report what I could, laughed at myself and the audience laughed along with me.
Because there was a lot to take note of, and I had to deliver the Grammarian’s report extemporaneously which usually means I will babble, I unsurprisingly went overtime. I was overtime by 4+ minutes which is the minimum speech length for an Icebreaker. That’s the longest I’ve been overtime in my entire Toastmasters experience. I am absolutely sure that at least two minutes of that was spent laughing at my own jokes. I think it’s sad but when it was announced, people just thought it was funny. You know why? Positive emotions trump negative emotions. I wasted their time but they laughed so they didn’t notice! :P
Overall, I wouldn’t say that it was my best performance as a Grammarian. However, by using humor, I was able to overcome my fear of the role and successfully demonstrated how you can still perform a role even if you are not confident about the technical aspects of it. I hope that it would encourage others to try taking on the Grammarian role in our next meetings. :)
Sincerely,
Len
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