Una cosa rara.

A strange thing.

Lately I’ve been investing a fair bit of over-achieving energy in a presentation I was giving today on the geography, climate and natural history of the “Southern Cone” countries of South America - Chile, Argentina and Uruguay - in my Spanish class. I planned very carefully what I would say, and fretted because the words didn’t always come out perfectly in my rehearsals, making me worry endlessly about the future of my Spanish voice-over aspirations. I really enjoyed the preparation, though, because I was learning a lot about the region, which is a fascinating one, and the language is beautiful and I loved learning how to say things like “temperate rain forest” (bosque pluvial templado) and to describe the habits, in Spanish, of birds that I already knew well.

So, today was the day. I had my notes carefully typed up with cues to tell me when to change the slides. The time came to start my talk, and I set those notes down and never even looked at them except to double-check the name of a certain volcano. It was as if “the smell of the grease-paint” took over and I forgot all about mispronouncing words and just tried to make the subject as interesting as possible for my fellow students. It was more fun than I’ve had in quite a while and the words flowed effortlessly. I was so pleased when my professor told me afterwards that my experience as a teacher and public speaker showed!

So, there’s a lesson here – when you have an audience, whether they are right there in front of you or just in your imagination in the voice-over booth - get out of your own way and try to speak to them the way they would like to be spoken to. The strange thing is that I was not really conscious of doing this today – only in hindsight do I realise that it happened. Speaking to a live audience is a great way to remember how to do this. So many of you do it on a regular basis but it has been a while for me and I had forgotten how much I enjoy it. I recommend it!

Las focas de Patagonia