Endless tales...: Last Lesson With Mrs J

Time passes fleetingly. With a blink of an eye, today is the last lesson with Mrs J.

It is needless to say that Mrs J is our inspiration and idol. Her sedulous effort to train and teach us so that we will become a better presenter has not fallen into deaf ears. We adhere to her advices and teachings intently.

In this last lesson, every student came prepared with their final presentation slides for the evaluation which will be conducted next week by another lecturer. Mrs J wants us to keep and maintain the standard of our language she reckons we ought to have. Hence, Mrs J and my classmates have taken the extra miles to work on our presentation slides before the final presentation day comes.

Of course, our works are not impeccable. Errors like inconsistent sizes of font, use of the non-standardized fonts, spacing, distracting/unprofessional backgrounds, grammar, etc could not escape under Mrs J’s hawk-like eyes. She is always meticulous in our presentation, especially this time, for we will be presenting in front of the other lecturer. She wants us to be professional and competent, to have less (or none at all) grammatical errors in our slides and to enjoy our presentation.

Throughout this course, she has always emphasized on our grammar because she believes that a good command of grammar shows how well a person is truly mastering the English language. Besides that, she also wants us to record our presentations so that we can view and come to palpable realization of the mistakes we have made during our presentation. And this method is known to be efficacious in teaching a person to spot the mistakes he/she does in a talk and hence be able to act on the mistakes accordingly. Like for my previous presentation on the ending of my topic (Katy Perry), I acted stiffly and tensed. I showed no natural hand gestures at all. I could see my hands hanging stiffly in their sockets and my face was taut. I mumbled through my ending with a rocket speed and as a consequence, my speech had come out slurred. I was quite discontented with my performance. However, I am grateful to Mrs J and the student (Soo JS) who has taken the trouble to record our videos because without them, I would never realize I had acted so unnatural that time. Though it is always funny and embarrassing to watch back our own performances, this is the effective way to learn!

Mrs J also wants us to have fun in presentation. Only when we are relishing in presenting, we will stand up and speak out confidently of our topics. Furthermore, when you know how to enjoy in presenting, you will tend to be more humorous, and thus able to captivate the audiences.

Back to this particular day of our last lesson. Mrs J presented with a bright yellow-orange circular patterned dress, matched with a beige scarf which was knotted snugly around her neck. The overall image has imparted an aura of bliss and formidable strength. When she smiled, it was as if I was staring into the bright sun, basking in her merciful warm radiance, washing away the lugubriousness that has been haunting me for these few days. Our class was ended with photo taking session with Mrs J. Though there is always reluctance in parting and separation, we did not leave the class with feelings of poignancy at all. At the end of the class, everyone was seen rushing impatiently to the front of the class to take their pictures with Mrs J. And don’t you think I would miss out this precious chance to have a picture with Mrs J who has inspired me so deeply?