Learning to talk is now in fashion among teenagers in big cities and university students, who believe that they need to be “equipped with soft skills” to prepare for their future.

The regular meetings held by the gymnastics, sports and social practice social skills chamber under of the HCM City Youth Cultural House) always attracted high numbers of young listeners. In some meetings, no idle seat is seen at the great hall of the cultural house.

The young people, who come there regularly, say that they attend the meetings in order to practice their speech ability, or, in simple words, they want to learn to talk much before the crowd. Hoang Nu Ngoc Anh, one of the learners, said that she is a personnel officer for a foreign company in district 3 of HCM City.

Being enthusiastic to participate in the games, regularly taking note about the rules of the games, Anh said that this will help her much in her work.

“When you talk before the crowd, it would be very boring if you act as the only speaker. Creating interaction between the speaker and the listeners is the key to successful presentation,” Anh said about what she has learnt.

“You should start with warm up games to attract the attention of audience; then you should raise the questions that make people to brainstorm. Besides the previous knowledge and experience, speakers need to constantly learn from others and turn others’ technique into theirs,” she added.

When asked why Anh decided to follow such a training course, she said that she made the decision to learn to talk after hearing the advice of a teacher. Four years ago, Anh graduated university at excellent level. However, after the thesis defending ceremony, her teacher frankly said to her that no company would accept her is she talks about her products in such a boring manner, even though her products are good.

At that time, Anh, for the first time in her life, had the chance to attend a professional speech delivered by Quach Tuan Khanh which was organized in HCM City. The speech themed “daring to dream and live with dreams” then attracted the special attention of the HCM City’s youth.

The speech attracted the participation of 2000 people, while every admission ticket cost 40,000 dong, a high sum of money for many young people. From that time, speaking and the job of orator have become more familiar to the youth in HCM City.

“Nowadays, in order to get promotion in your jobs, you should be a good speaker. However, since there is no course which trains professional speakers in Vietnam, we have to learn from each other,” Anh said.

Another learner, who was at the cultural house, also said that he has to update information regularly and attend the courses on communication skills in order to become more self-confident.

Master of psychology, Nguyen Huu Long from the Central Pedagogical Junior College, who has teaching communication skills to thousands of learners, said that good speakers should to create excitement for the listeners, stimulate active interactions through words and body language. The argument in the speech must be strictly controlled, but need to have sense of humor, thus helping create vivid conversations.

Currently, a lot of PR companies are providing training courses to help learners practice speech skills. The courses have been attracting a lot of learners, who are office workers or management officers. Besides, the training courses are also very useful for the Youth Union’s activists and social organizations.

In general, the training courses are not too expensive and affordable for young people. At the HCM City Youth Cultural House, a communication skill course costs 850,000 dong (15 lessons). What young people dream about, how to promote in jobs, how to balance themselves in life, and how to become independent are the regular hot topics in the lessons.

Teen Leaders, a class which has been introduced as aiming to produce young leaders, has made debut, gathering 75 learners, who come from different provinces and cities nationwide.

NLD