Arnob Hassan, Being born in the United States and speaking English his whole life has realized that that will never guarantee a smooth experience with public speaking. He knows English very well and can speak to someone like a normal person, but he is an introvert which makes it difficult for him to speak to someone he doesn’t know that well.

Arnob had gotten a research opportunity which he felt excited about. He felt he finally had something to do during the summer. The only aspect of the research opportunity that he didn’t like was the Presentation part of it. The first week of this program he was asked to participate in a discussion. It was a classwide discussion, or a socratic seminar. It was about the ethics surrounding science research and how we can foster a better environment for students and teachers reading it. In his narrative he says that it was nothing hard as he had prepared for this part one day for hours, putting tons of effort into answering the prep questions. It was his turn to speak and he said he was struggling to pronounce the word ‘decision’ correctly. He ended up pronouncing it as “DE-SIZZUN DE-SIZZUN”. After being asked if this was his first socratic seminar, Arnob stated that it was not actually his first socratic seminar, he had done some in the past but he said this one seemed more difficult to him because he had to convey his thoughts to a much larger audience. 

Later that August Arnob had to present his findings at the museum of natural history in Manhattan to hundreds of people. He felt this would become his first true test at public speaking. He felt this situation was extremely intimidating. A group of people came up to him and he was asked to present.This was hard for him because Arnob mentioned that he had never done public speeches before, so despite him doing a wonderful job at answering all of their questions and reading what was on the cards he prepared it was nerve wracking, especially for an introvert. 

He has taken speech class here at CCNY and he has felt that it has changed his feelings regarding public speaking. Although Aronb has taken English classes and spoken English his entire life he felt that his class changed his  perspective on language and public speaking.Arnob recalls an advice his professor gave regarding speech that he’ll never forget. His professor told them that the entire audience whether you like it or not wants you to succeed. No one wants to see someone stutter or fail to properly articulate what they are talking about. The audience yearns for a well spoken and thought out speech or presentation that will allow them to have a laugh or learn something productive. He followed this advice and thought it worked wonders. He aced all his speeches he had to do in that class and has said that that advice has also helped him with class participation throughout his college career. 

Arnob states that these experiences outline that his entire life, he has had the impression that the audience hates him and that they want him to not succeed in his endeavors. But after all this he has learned that this is not the case. Language is something that connects humans. It’s how and individual can  share their stories and tell each other about the world around us so it is important to utilize this gift we have discovered and to stop treating and seeing other people as hostile and wanting us to fail. It doesn’t matter how well you know English and its vocabularies if you can’t communicate meaningful ideas, unless you get rid of your fears. 

Arnob has used internal dialogue and descriptive details in his narrative, which gives the audience reading this narrative more insights on how he must have felt during the scenes that were happening. Arnob also has used a formal tone in this essay which makes this narrative sound more structured and professional. 

Prologue

This paper was my favorite, ironically, because I don’t usually prefer Peer reviews or group work. Arnob was great to work with. I think we worked well as a team, and he was very flexible with scheduling because I was all over the place. What I could improve on would probably be maybe I could’ve asked even more detailed questions when I interviewed him about his paper.

Audio Interview: