I was with three other members in the same group, one whom I have known earlier from another friend of mine. The other two were new acquaintances; we just greeted each other good-naturedly during our quarantine period, chatted for a while, something like a short ice-breaking session. I figured it would be best to get to know at least their names and where they're from so that during the test, we would be able to have a pleasant group discussion.
Err, it was not that bad I guess. Our topic was regarding violence against women and the effective roles of curbing the problem. I was given the point 'Women themselves could play an effective role in curbing this problem.' During the first part, the individual presentation, I was a little blur and blank and nervous and excited. O___________O Mixed feelings hmm. I presented my two subpoints: Taking self-defense arts, and Knowing women's rights. I elaborated on those two, talking about the need to take up Tae-kwon-do or Karate to defend themselves against snatch thefts so that they would be more alert of their surroundings and reduce the chances of violence happening on them, and that women should be aware of their own rights and fight for them in order to protect themselves. The subpoints sounded err...strong but weak, and weak but strong. I felt I was not ready for the first part, considering I was the first speaker, Candidate A, and we were the first group of the day. (Thank goodness my housemates trained me to be Candidate A in our practice session...Love them lots! :3)
Then the second part: Group discussion. The other three points were about authorities, society and mass media. I agreed on society with my points that parents which are part of the society play an important role in the upbringing of their children. Education begins at home, and prevention is better than cure. In order to curb this problem, parents should educate their children not to mistreat women but to respect each and every one. I stressed a lot on parents though. My friend, Desmond, the one I knew through Lai Kit, my another friend, supported my opinion on the issue, with his own points that included authorities. The other two candidates, Yuri and Yen Shan( I think that's how you spell her name...) defended the point on women being the ones that can play the most effective role in curbing violence against women. However, I felt they were too soft-spoken; Yen Shan was close to speaking nothing and contributing very weak points of her own. Yuri did better than her though; she did provide some good points to support her opinion. At the end of the test, the chief examiner told me that I was dominating the group and that I should allow the others to speak. The problem was: I did prompt Yuri and Yen Shan to give more of their opinions and ideas in the discussion, but it seemed Yen Shan had not much to say, whereas for Yuri, I can see that she tried but couldn't come up with other reasonings to further support the women idea. Desmond, nah, he was doing great here, and I couldn't help but to silently applaud him for his calm and cool performance, unlike me, the dominant-ramble-on-crap-here-and-there-assertive speaker as though I'm expecting people to attack me or something.
Overall, it was quite pleasant, save the comment by the chief examiner about me being too dominant during the group discussion. Ugh...I didn't know whether it was a good thing or a bad one. I talked, but I talked too much I guess... = =
Hopefully, I can get high marks for this. *crosses fingers and prays silently in her heart*
