High school extracurricular activities

Lirazel
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:40:41 +0000

plus I don’t feel like talking (but I really really want to!) since I’m not good at speaking English (I’ve only been in US for two years ) .



Ways to improve your speaking and your English:

Speaking clubs, if they have the right people, may help you a lot. I know of several Toastmasters chapters that specialize not only in making people who speak decently speak very well, but in getting people with crippling stage fright or tons of verbal tics or other major speaking problems to speak well. If your chapter isn’t friendly, don’t do it though. It’s scary at first, but becomes much better. (I used to visibly shake with fear when speaking in public…this fall I got to give a 5-minute speech to a thousand or more people. It was so much fun!) I think that forensics (not the CSI type) is similar in function to Toastmasters.

Certain types of debate (not policy, probably) might also fit the bill…again, based mostly on which one, at your school, has the friendliest/laid-back-est atmosphere. You don’t want one where nothing gets done, but you also probably want to steer clear of the Really Intense Competitive Winning Is Really Really Really Important ones. MUN or Model Congress might also do it? They’re not so speaking-focused, but you do speak formally there, and could probably get some help.

Reading will also help you get acquainted with some of the vocabulary you may be lacking. Nonfiction books pertaining to your academic interests might be good, but I’ve always learned more words from novels, personally. Note: Don’t be afraid of pronouncing things wrong. I’m a native English speaker. Both my parents are lawyers with huge vocabularies who used those huge vocabularies around me from day 1. I am known on my Latin team as the-girl-with-the-big-vocabulary. I’m good at English. I still very, very often pronounce things wrong because I have never heard the word I’m trying to use. I’ve read it, sure, maybe read it often, but I’ve never actually heard anybody say it. (Camaraderie was the latest instance.) It’s not a mark of oh-your-English-is-bad or GASP-you-learn-your-words-from-books. Well, it is the second, but that’s really okay. It’s definitely not a mark of shame or anything. I had a reputation, along with girl-with-the-big-vocabulary, on the Latin team as girl-who-learns-words-from-books-and-can’t-pronounce them. It was just a thing Lirazel did, like how Lirazel’s teammate flipped her hair. No moral judgment was associated with it, so if that’s something you’re ever feeling shy about, don’t!..and I’ve really quite lost my train of thought here. Best of luck to you in everything! You’re quite clear for someone who’s been speaking English for such a short time.

^And of course, you don’t HAVE to do these things if you don’t want to. If studying makes you happy, don’t let me interfere! Those are just my suggestions for how to speak better (since you really want to, you said. That was the one part about which I was unclear…did you want to be able to participate more in clubs by joining conversations, or to actually practice more formal speaking? A lot of my suggestions are geared toward the latter, although the confidence those clubs try to build will help with the former as well.) Clubs at my high school at least tended to hold informational sessions near the beginning of the year. It might behoove you to attend at least the informational sessions of some clubs, besides math, in which you are interested. Speaking clubs might be a good addition to that list of clubs to visit. Good luck again!