Dear Reader,

  This Saturday I was in Taipei with one of my students (Ray). Both of
  us joined the 2002 Toastmasters convention (Public Speaking and
  Leadership). It was an eye opening experience for my 12-year-old
  student and it opened his mind to a much wider International
  community. The slogan for this year's convention said it all,
  "Toastmasters link the world".

  During the intermission, one excited lady approached me. She wanted
  to know if I was Ray's father. "No," I said. "I am his teacher and
  we are from Taichung." She said she happened to be sitting next to
  Ray for the convention and she was very impressed with Ray. She
  wanted to know how I did it. After all, Toastmasters is a huge
  international organization for adults (10,000 clubs and 250,000
  members). She was very interested to know how she can bring her own
  daughter into the organization. She said that English public
  speaking is now very important in school. She wanted to know if I
  was opening a school in Taipei.

  Though I have won many English public speaking competitions in the
  past, I'm setting another exciting goal for myself. I am training
  some children at Jacksonfive to not only speak English confidently,
  but also speak confidently in front of a crowd of strangers. This
  isn't just because public speaking ability is important at public
  schools. Public speaking is a valuable lifetime skill to acquire. I
  have gained a lot from my public speaking training at Toastmasters.
  I would like my students to benefit from the same experience.

  But honestly, I wasn't quite sure if these 12-14 year old students
  would be as excited as I am about a professional organization for
  adults. Most members are the age of their parents ^_^ I started
  slowly at first by taking just two students there. I started by
  preparing them to tell an English joke. It was quite successful.
  They made quite a "splash" at the Taichung Toastmasters club (def:
  impression). They were very popular that night because in the
  club's 17 year history, no one this young has ever spoken there
  before (and spoken so well and so confidently). Many of the club
  members approached my students during intermission to talk to them.
  I was also very pleased to notice that my students didn't seem
  intimidated by all the attention of these adults (some of them
  English teachers). They seemed comfortable with the attention and
  confident about using English (even in front of a group of adult
  strangers).

  Slowly, I'm adding more and more students to the group that I take
  to Toastmasters. Just tonight, in fact, I took a 4th grader student
  for the first time to the Taichung Toastmasters Club. I was surprised
  when she asked me, "Teacher, can I go do an English joke?" at her
  first meeting. I complimented her after the meeting and told her how
  proud I am about her being so brave.

  Why do I have so many "brave" English students at my school? After
  giving this question a lot of thought tonight, I have come to the
  conclusion that it must be the genuine western-style learning
  environment that we created here. They are not afraid to use their
  English even if they aren't 100% sure they are correct. We have
  taught them not only English, but also the courage to use it to
  express themselves and their thoughts as individuals. 

  My students are now even more excited to go to Toastmasters than I
  am. To be honest, I didn't expect this. And I didn't expect Jackie
  (another of my Toastmaster protege), to come in second in the
  Taichung county English speech competition either ^_^

  If a 4th grader can do it, so can you...
  http://www.toastmasters.org and http://www.toastmasters.org.tw

                                                  JacksonFive

  P.S. Can one of our readers please help me translate the homepage
  of our website (http://www.path2english.com) to Chinese and
  email it to me in a Word document? Also, does anyone know
  people at Yahoo/Kimo? Thanks.

NEXT ISSUE's FEATURED TOPIC:

    "Misconception #4: The bigger the better. Big, flashy schools
      always offer the best learning environment."