[dda]

Many years ago I took a speech class in college. It was interesting to find that a huge portion of the class did not feel as though they would be able to speak adequately in front of a group.

By Yahwe's standards, they were probably correct.

One young man was particularly painful. Our first assignment was to pick any topic in the world which interested us and to speak for two minutes on that topic. The topic could be as simple as my favorite things for breakfast. The young man in question (no it wasn't me) stood up and stammered along for about 30 seconds on some mundate topic and eventually sputtered to a stop. He then stood and sweated for another minute and a half without making a sound though his jaw occasionally moved. It was horrible. It was painful. It was embarrassing to watch.

Our professor sat quietly for the minute and a half, as did we all. At the end of the period of silence, the professor congratulated him on his choice of topic. Thought of several other positive remarks to make, all of which were accurate and told him that he expected that he would do better the next time when it wasn't so new.

The young man was never what one would call a very good speaker, however, during the course his efforts became less and less painful as he moved steadily in the direction of meeting the professors expectations of him. I always felt that the professor giving him some positive words and making it clear that he wasn't disappointed in his efforts and expected that he would do better undobtedly caused him to improve more than any amount of criticism could have done.