Snapped.

“Some of you seemed to be struggling with words”, the lecturer commented after my group finished the presentation.

She commented us alone, after the class has dismissed, to reduce us shame perhaps. But still, the single sentence actually has knocked me to the deepest of my heart. Not only that, she added, “Some of you can’t even convey understandable message. I am worried, you can’t appear to look struggle in front of your students somewhere during practicum period. You have got only one year, please improvise yourself while the time is there. If I happened to see you in the coming two semesters, I want to see you improved”. SENTAP. Seriously sentap dowh. Though my group members said she was referring to this one particular group member, because she always will be so panicked during presentation until she lost even the most basic vocabularies like ‘price’ and ‘assessor’ this time around. Yet still, I felt the heat directed to my face too.

I too did terribly during the presentation. I stuttered and lost quite very frequently this morning. I feel embarrassed to the class, really embarrassed. Maybe the classmates were not even giving a damn to how i present but i personally concern about my delivery skill. Even though I am good at writing and other skills in English, I will admit that I am proficiently low in speaking. I hate this feeling, really do. It makes me feel regret of choosing this highly-needed-English-proficiency course. I know I could have improved but I was and am too piggy lazy to practice the language. I could have practiced to present this morning’s topic but opted not to that resulted me stuttering in front of the whole class. I am embarrassed to my own self too. I got a high band in MUET, higher than most of the classmates did but I do not reflect myself to that superior level.

I googled ‘ways to improve speaking skills’. Among the result I found are talking to yourself which I do everyday, watch and read English materials which already my all-the-time preferences, and chat in English virtually which I had since long time ago English speaking friends on the internet. Believe me, I do all that almost every day and at a great amount too BUT they never really helped me in speaking in real. THE ONLY MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF IMPROVING ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILL IS BY PRACTISING IT IN REAL. But then again, I am not confident enough to speak English with my course mates. Some of them are just too good to be true (those English is their first language) and those my close circle of friends..they are not the first user of English. They could be, but just like me, it’s weird to speak English with your rummies! We can't joke around like we always do. What more to neglect our respected yet convenient dialects. Second language simply does not make things well expressed. There is one thing I am thinking about, I should be getting an English speaking boyfriend by now. But then again, I do not have enough confidence for that, sighhh……..

Therefore, for the time being, as suggested by some googling sources, writing a blog in English could improve speaking skill, though I know it wouldn’t work much because for God’s sake, it’s Writing not Speaking! I even am trying to use as perfect English as possible, be it the spelling, the discourse markers and the expressions. Yes I am nerd. I am concerned about my English speaking ability. Very much concerned.