Hari Pembentangan

I tell you, there's nothing more boring than when it's presentation time in class.

There are groups who turn their bum to the audience as they mumble out whole theses from the power point slides. These groups are usually vying for three different awards: "World's Wordiest Slides", "Most Monotonous Members" and "I Can Make The Audience Stare At My Bum Longer Than You Can" awards.

There are groups who don't have a clue when I ask them a basic question (a question I only asked because I wanted to see if they actually understand what they're explaining. I know, I'm mean) and end up pleading to the lecturer for help. No awards for these groups.

Then there are groups who end up misinterpreting the source material so badly, the whole class is left more confused than they were to begin with. This is usually quite an achievement, and are thus automatically awarded the "Kumpulan-Kumpulan Menyesatkan" trophy.

Of course, the source of these groups problems are usually language difficulty. When you can't understand the language of the source material, nor can you express yourself using the language, how the heck are you supposed to present?

Thanks to my proficiency in English, my own experience as a presenter has been easy-sailing so far... Until yesterday, when I had to do a presentation, sorry, pembentangan in my Bahasa Melayu Untuk Kerjaya class.

Boy, did I get my comeuppance!

First of all, I'm not going to pull a Sharifah Amani on you all and say I sound stupid when I speak Malay. I speak Malay every day, with only a bit of weirdness in the accent (says my friends, though I personally don't think it sounds weird at all. I mean, it's not like I over-emphasise the 'r', and I even get the 't' sound down perfectly. Nor do I ever say 'jew' instead of 'je', or 'kerr' instead of 'ke'. You have every right to slap me if I ever do.). But there's a big difference between speaking everyday Malay, or bahasa pasar, and giving a formal presentation in proper Malay.

Luckily, my topic was super easy -- temu duga. Thank God for Mr. Mazlan and his Language for Occupational Purposes classes; not only could I steal some of his pointers about job interviews, but I planned to steal his jokes as well.

Yeah, you got that. Jokes. Anyone who has ever watched me present or debate or even MC know that I NEVER attempt jokes when I'm right up there. My style is formal and stiff and serious and, dare I say it, scary.  I like to think I have a don't-mess-with-me vibe at the front, adopted to avoid making people fall asleep in class. (Besides, whenever I plan jokes early on, they usually fall flat when I actually deliver them. I DON'T KNOW WHY!!! *maybe because they're not actually funny*)

So, yeah, I was nervous like mad about the pembentangan, especially because the source material was so DULL! Despite the interesting-ness of the topic, the text book barely explained anything we didn't already know. And the text book was what we had to base our slides on.

For example, my first point was about susunan bilik temu duga. The point given in the book? "Sediakan bilik yang kemas, bersih, kosong dan tidak digunakan oleh sesiapa"

LIKE DUH.

I was panicking when I prepared the slides. (The one above is one of the slides, courtesy of SmartArt.) I thought, how the heck am I supposed to elaborate a point like that? It's just so...obvious! And I didn't want to be like those boring presenters who just read slides without explaining them. Hmmm, I thought, maybe I can say something about first impressions. Then I panicked again when I realised I didn't know how to translate 'impression' into Malay. The end result? "Tujuan kita harus menyediakan bilik sebegitu ialah untuk mengelakkan calon mendapat persepsi yang negatif tentang syarikat kita apabila dia melangkah masuk ke dalam bilik temu duga!"

Not bad, eh? A bit 'LIKE DUH', but what else could I say?

So that's how my preparation process went; writing out slides, panicking over lack of points to elaborate, calming down again over an idea, then panicking over inability to translate it into BM.

There was also one point in the book about temu duga yang berkesan, and the point was "menjawab soalan dengan jelas dan yakin" (see my slide below), with no elaborations given in the book. Alright, it was up to me to come up with an explanation!

Lucky for me, I learned a lot in my LOP classes and my real-life interview for my internship a few weeks back. So I figured I could explain about how, to confidently answer a question, you have to first google FAQ interview questions, then prepare an impressive answer. And one of them would be "tell us about yourself" or "ceritakan tentang diri kamu".

I immediately flashed back to my answer during that interview, which was "my name is Anisah Shurfa bt Mohammed Shukry, and I'm a student from IIUM. My degree in Sociology and Anthropology helps me to easily assimilate myself into any organisational culture. Plus, I'm pretty versatile as we sociologists study human interactions and social processes, such as family institutions, education, organisations and even politics."

I grinned. Brilliant example! But then my grin faltered. How the heck was I supposed to translate that?

And so began the tedious process of google translating, of me trying to say "membolehkan saya mengasimilasikan diri ke dalam budaya organisasi" out loud without stumbling over the words (thank God roommates takde masa tu), of figuring out whether 'versatil' was actually a Malay word...

And then dawned Hari Pembentangan...

It went quite well, actually! My classmates actually laughed at my jokes, even the ones I didn't steal from Mr. Mazlan! That was a definite WIN in its own right. Yeah, I stumbled with several words throughout the presentation, was even at a loss at one point, but I got most of the gist out. Hands trembled like mad, but they always do, so that wasn't really a big deal.

My lecturer's comments?

"Anisah nampak sangat bersedia dan bersemangat."

Yay!

"Tapi Anisah macam ada masalah sikit dengan bahasa Melayu. Tapi memang nampak yang Anisah mencuba."

Boo!

On the bright side, at least it was a lot better than the comments other presenters got, like 'muka sombong' or 'nampak pucat' or 'macam tak selesa kat depan'. All in all, I think I got off pretty lightly.

THE END