The Grammarian First Attempt

Speaking in front of people is getting more fun after more practices. Today I for the first time played the role of the grammarian and learned much.

1. It’s tiring to stay attentive throughout the speeches. That also implies that I need improvement in this. For times I found myself doing something else so I missed some parts of the presentations. e.g. I looked up the dictionary, I went to find a blank piece of papers. These are distractions that weakened my listening skills. So I should avoid doing this in real life.

2. It’s easier to find people’s mistakes than strengths. Common mistakes are “provide people (with) tips”, play (with) balls and toys but play a role. Give this to someone is better rephrased to giving someone something. And the general evaluator gave me this comment: mention names only on good observations, don’t mention names for bad things. Such valuable comments!

3. The word I chose for Word of the Day was “trivial”. It looks like people forgot to use this word after the first few speakers. I should make the word larger on the board next time.

4. One speaker said a woman’s beauty depreciates… Depreciate means decrease in value. The word should be deteriorates, which means getting worse. We can tear paper into pieces, but it’s better “shredding” them. I always forgot to mention the best points during the speech. Does this happen to all speakers?

5. People reacted much when I said “women are like wine, they just got better when they age.” They thought this is philosophical. I thought that’s a fairly common saying.

Oh I like being the grammarian. I probably should do this again.