Hello dear members , lets read out a prose passage from our favorite book
This way we concentrate on our pronounciaton articultiaon and presentation style.
An extract from Paduma meets the Sunbird
Paduma and the Monitor
His left cheek is stinging.
Paduma bites his lips and keeps his head up, determined not to cry. He hears the sniggers and whispers of the children seated behind him. Those seated in front turn to look; they have gleeful grins pasted across their faces,
MissRupa goes striding back to the blackboard to continue the lesson, Paduma stares at the back of her head to hide his confusion and anger.
The plan that worked so well int he previous year has gone badly this time.
Miss Premini had been the class teacher in Grade Four . A kind and placid person , she had struggled to maintain order in her class of hyperactive nine year old children. the girls were well behaved but the boys had brought the class to the edge of anarchy. Most of them came to school because their mothers had threatened to hang them by their ears if they didn't; they only needed the slightest excuse to create some disturbance that would prevent lessons being taken.
Paduma had been , by far, the noisiest and most incorrigible. Miss Premini had been at her wit's end till she made an inspired decision.
Replies
Is this a valuable technique to use in business? Is it? Let's see, Take
Henry G. Duvernoy of Duvemoy and Sons, a wholesale baking firm in
New York.
Mr. Duvernoy had been trying to sell bread to a certain New York
hotel. He had called on the manager every week for four years. He
went to the same social affairs the manager attended. He even took
rooms in the hotel and lived there in order to get the business. But
he failed.
"Then," said Mr. Duvernoy, "after studying human relations, I
resolved to change my tactics. I decided to find out what interested
this man - what caught his enthusiasm.
"I discovered he belonged to a society of hotel executives called the
Hotel Greeters of America. He not only belonged, but his bubbling
enthusiasm had made him president of the organization, and
president of the International Greeters. No matter where its
conventions were held, he would be there.
"So when I saw him the next day, I began talking about the
Greeters. What a response I got. What a response! He talked to me
for half an hour about the Greeters, his tones vibrant with
enthusiasm. I could plainly see that this society was not only his
hobby, it was the passion of his life. Before I left his office, he had
'sold' me a membership in his organization.
"In the meantime, I had said nothing about bread. But a few days
later, the steward of his hotel phoned me to come over with samples
and prices.
" 'I don't know what you did to the old boy,' the steward greeted me,
'but he sure is sold on you!'
"Think of it! I had been drumming at that man for four years - trying
to get his business - and I'd still be drumming at him if I hadn't
finally taken the trouble to find out what he was interested in, and
what he enjoyed talking about."
Enjoyed listening to your reading dearest Mayumi
As I write this chapter, I have before me a letter from Edward L.
Chalif, who was active in Boy Scout work.
"One day I found I needed a favor," wrote Mr. Chalif. "A big Scout
jamboree was coming off in Europe, and I wanted the president of
one of the largest corporations in America to pay the expenses of
one of my boys for the trip.
"Fortunately, just before I went to see this man, I heard that he had
drawn a check for a million dollars, and that after it was canceled, he
had had it framed.
"So the first thing I did when I entered his office was to ask to see
the check. A check for a million dollars! I told him I never knew that
anybody had ever written such a check, and that I wanted to tell my
boys that I had actually seen a check for a million dollars. He gladly
showed it to me; I admired it and asked him to tell me all about how
it happened to be drawn."
You notice, don't you, that Mr. Chalif didn't begin by talking about
the Boy Scouts, or the jamboree in Europe, or what it was he
wanted? He talked in terms of what interested the other man. Here's
the result:
"Presently, the man I was interviewing said: 'Oh, by the way, what
was it you wanted to see me about?' So I told him.
"To my vast surprise," Mr. Chalif continues, "he not only granted
immediately what I asked for, but much more. I had asked him to
send only one boy to Europe, but he sent five boys and myself, gave
me a letter of credit for a thousand dollars and told us to stay in
Europe for seven weeks. He also gave me letters of introduction to
his branch presidents, putting them at our service, and he himself
met us in Paris and showed us the town.
Since then, he has given jobs to some of the boys whose parents
were in want, and he is still active in our group.
"Yet I know if I hadn't found out what he was interested in, and got
him warmed up first, I wouldn't have found him one-tenth as easy to
approach."
Each chapter has a lesson of its own .
Thank you dearest Mayumi
Enjoy reading it over and over
5 - How To Interest People
Everyone who was ever a guest of Theodore Roosevelt was
astonished at the range and diversity of his knowledge. Whether his
visitor was a cowboy or a Rough Rider, a New York politician or a
diplomat, Roosevelt knew what to say. And how was it done? The
answer was simple. Whenever Roosevelt expected a visitor, he sat
up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew
his guest was particularly interested.
For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal road to a
person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.
The genial William Lyon Phelps, essayist and professor of literature
at Yale, learned this lesson early in life.
"When I was eight years old and was spending a weekend visiting
my Aunt Libby Linsley at her home in Stratford on the Housatonic,"
he wrote in his essay on Human Nature, "a middle-aged man called
one evening, and after a polite skirmish with my aunt, he devoted his
attention to me. At that time, I happened to be excited about boats,
and the visitor discussed the subject in a way that seemed to me
particularly interesting. After he left, I spoke of him with enthusiasm.
What a man! My aunt informed me he was a New York lawyer, that
he cared nothing whatever about boats - that he took not the
slightest interest in the subject. 'But why then did he talk all the time
about boats?'
" 'Because he is a gentleman. He saw you were interested in boats,
and he talked about the things he knew would interest and please
you. He made himself agreeable.' "
And William Lyon Phelps added: "I never forgot my aunt's remark."
Isaac F. Marcosson, a journalist who interviewed hundreds of
celebrities, declared that many people fail to make a favorable
impression because they don't listen attentively. "They have been so
much concerned with what they are going to say next that they do
not keep their ears open. ... Very important people have told me that
they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the ability to listen
seems rarer than almost any other good trait ."
And not only important personages crave a good listener, but
ordinary folk do too. As the Reader's Digest once said: "Many
persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience,"
During the darkest hours of the Civil War, Lincoln wrote to an old
friend in Springfield, Illinois, asking him to come to Washington.
Lincoln said he had some problems he wanted to discuss with him.
The old neighbor called at the White House, and Lincoln talked to
him for hours about the advisability of issuing a proclamation freeing
the slaves. Lincoln went over all the arguments for and against such
a move, and then read letters and newspaper articles, some
denouncing him for not freeing the slaves and others denouncing
him for fear he was going to free them. After talking for hours,
Lincoln shook hands with his old neighbor, said good night, and sent
him back to Illinois without even asking for his opinion. Lincoln had
done all the talking himself. That seemed to clarify his mind. "He
seemed to feel easier after that talk," the old friend said. Lincoln
hadn't wanted advice, He had wanted merely a friendly, sympathetic
listener to whom he could unburden himself. That's what we all want
when we are in trouble. That is frequently all the irritated customer
wants, and the dissatisfied employee or the hurt friend.
One of the great listeners of modern times was Sigmund Freud. A
man who met Freud described his manner of listening: "It struck me
so forcibly that I shall never forget him. He had qualities which I had
never seen in any other man. Never had I seen such concentrated
attention. There was none of that piercing 'soul penetrating gaze'
business. His eyes were mild and genial. His voice was low and kind.
His gestures were few. But the attention he gave me, his
appreciation of what I said, even when I said it badly, was
extraordinary, You've no idea what it meant to be listened to like
that."
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you
behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never
listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have
an idea while the other person is talking, don't wait for him or her to
finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
Do you know people like that? I do, unfortunately; and the
astonishing part of it is that some of them are prominent.
Bores, that is all they are - bores intoxicated with their own egos,
drunk with a sense of their own importance.
People who talk only of themselves think only of themselves. And
"those people who think only of themselves," Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler, longtime president of Columbia University, said, "are
hopelessly uneducated. They are not educated," said Dr. Butler, "no
matter how instructed they may be."
So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive
listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other
persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about
themselves and their accomplishments.
Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times
more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than
they are in you and your problems. A person's toothache means
more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million
people. A boil on one's neck interests one more than forty
earthquakes in Africa. Think of that the next time you start a
conversation.
• Principle 4 - Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about
themselves.
Thank you for this advice.
Nice to note the pitch and note of presentation
Thumbs up
Thanks teacher...going to be careful with my pitch..:)
Wishing you well : )
Thank you for the reply to Clinch......Yet I am nto able to do either :(
Years ago, a poor Dutch immigrant boy washed the windows of a
bakery shop after school to help support his family. His people were
so poor that in addition he used to go out in the street with a basket
every day and collect stray bits of coal that had fallen in the gutter
where the coal wagons had delivered fuel. That boy, Edward Bok,
never got more than six years of schooling in his life; yet eventually
he made himself one of the most successful magazine editors in the
history of American journalism. How did he do it? That is a long
story, but how he got his start can be told briefly. He got his start by
using the principles advocated in this chapter.
He left school when he was thirteen and became an office boy for
Western Union, but he didn't for one moment give up the idea of an
education. Instead, he started to educate himself, He saved his
carfares and went without lunch until he had enough money to buy
an encyclopedia of American biography - and then he did an
unheard-of thing. He read the lives of famous people and wrote
them asking for additional information about their childhoods. He
was a good listener. He asked famous people to tell him more about
themselves. He wrote General James A. Garfield, who was then
running for President, and asked if it was true that he was once a
tow boy on a canal; and Garfield replied. He wrote General Grant
asking about a certain battle, and Grant drew a map for him and
invited this fourteen-year old boy to dinner and spent the evening
talking to him.
Soon our Western Union messenger boy was corresponding with
many of the most famous people in the nation: Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln,
Louisa May Alcott, General Sherman and Jefferson Davis. Not only
did he correspond with these distinguished people, but as soon as he
got a vacation, he visited many of them as a welcome guest in their
homes. This experience imbued him with a confidence that was
invaluable. These men and women fired him with a vision and
ambition that shaped his life. And all this, let me repeat, was made
possible solely by the application of the principles we are discussing
here.
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