Glenn Baker

A sky walk is a passage for people. It is built above the ground across the wide street. Some sky walks connect two or more buildings and are covered with a roof. Thus people can go from one building to another without being bothered by rain, sun, traffic.
It is not easy to build strong defenses against the traffic monster. The government spends a lot of money to buy good cement, steel and other materials needed to construct the structures. Good engineers and laborers are needed too. Engineers make sure that anyone who will pass the structures can do safely.

It is an advantage to know not only the teachers in all your subjects, but also those whom you may need to approach in the future. Knowing and being known to them will make those approaches easy. And if you are in high school and intend to enroll in the same college or university for further studies, familiarity with many teachers is an asset. If you happen to enroll in their subjects, you already know their teaching styles and preferences. Do you think you have little to do with management because you are only an ordinary student? It is not always the case. Your research assignments or campus position may require you to interview or confer with the Registrar. One of the deans, someone in the President’s office or a member of the Board of Directors. You may meet them in the corridors or read about them in the newspapers. Isn’t it embarrassing to meet them some place and not know their names? One easy way of doing do id to read your campus publication. Campus publications normally announce the names of school owners, officials, faculty members and other personnel and student leaders.

Someone wrote to me asking ‘how do you stay strong, hold onto faith and hear your inner voice when life presents you with challenges?’ It is a question many people struggle with myself included, when ’stuff’ happens it is difficult to hang onto the belief this too shall pass and everything will be okay. I wish I could say I possessed a magic wand which would make all the bad things better or disappear but I don’t, all I can offer is a few humble words that may help you through the process.
Firstly as I said before you have to be your own best friend and take care of yourself. It is okay to say ‘no’ when you need to recharge your own batteries, it is okay to say ‘not today’ or ‘I love you but I need to take care of me right now’. Taking care of self is essential if you are to be of any use to others.
Secondly be patient with yourself and others sometimes the only cure is time and sometimes we say and do things as a reaction to our feelings. Sometimes these aren’t appropriate or helpful but beating yourself up because you are human isn’t going to help either and sometimes we have to turn it around and go what would I have done in the same circumstances.

If your teacher talks fast or there is a lot to jot down, grasp the meaning of each paragraph she says, summarize it mentally and then take it down, emphasizing the main points with a highlighter or underlines. This means you must listen carefully and without distraction before you can mentally summarize.
Many students take down the teachers lecture word for word. This is, in general, not good practice. This is time consuming and tiring. It is copying, not note taking. Yet these students must do so, as they cannot as yet determine what points are important. Only the teacher can tell and she usually does so only at the end. Until then, it seems safe to write all her statements word for word to avoid mistakes and omissions when you re read or review your notes.
Looses leaves have an advantage over spiral notebooks. They can be rearranged later. But loose leaves tend to get misplaced or fly off as you move from subject to subject or from class to class. A big notebook with big vertical columns is advisable for lecture notes. Write the dictated main points on the right and bigger column. Use the left column for references and notations to the main points on the right.
You can use symbols and abbreviations or devise your own to help you understand and memorize. Re writing notes is not possible in between classes for lack of time. You may find that time when you reach home. Or during the week ends. That is why it is better to listen with attention and then summarize the main points of a lecture instead of re-organizing them later. As you do, exert effort to memorize them.

You recognize this type of student in all campuses and classes. He basks under the light and popularity or strength of a superior classmate. He always tags along with the superior one, usually within a group where the strong one is the leader. The clinging vine never says no and is never offended. He is parasite and does anything the boss or the group does. He is stoically patient and a push over. He has no mind of his own. he may be studying if the entire group is studying but only because he wants to belong, to continue to be part of that group. His life depends on it. The bad news for this type of student is that he or she will not be graded in the same way his or her group leader is graded. He has to be graded on his own. But his dependence on his leader is both obvious and dangerous. He always glances at the boss when he recites. yet after school, they must be parted. That will be great disaster for the parasite.
This identification-self-identification exercise is definite booster to your studies because it sharpens your awareness of who and what you are. It resets your direction and recharges as well as refocuses your mental energies.

Like facts and statistics, testimony must meet the test of relevance. And like facts and statistics, testimony must seem free from bias. For example, a doctor who promotes vitamin therapy may be the part owner of a company that sells vitamins. Her expert advice to “start taking Nature Blessed vitamins today” may be somewhat suspect because of self-interest. The test of recent takes a strange twist when applied to testimony. If you are using expert or lay testimony, the conventional rule applies: Latest is best. But if you are using prestige testimony, often the older the better. Wisdom ages well, and heroes and heroines frequently glow brighter with the passage of time.
In addition to these basic tests, you must also consider whether the type of testimony is appropriate for your purpose. Lay testimony can humanize a speech and promote identification among listeners, your message, and yourself.
Prestige testimony can enhance the attractiveness of both speech and speaker, but only expert testimony can demonstrate that a statement is factually true.
As you use testimony, be sure that the quotation you select reflects the overall meaning and intent of its author. Never twist the meaning of testimony to make it fit your purposes—this unethical practice is called “quoting out of context.” Political advertising, as candidates try to put a positive spin on their image, is often rife with it. For example, during a political campaign in Illinois, one state representative sent out a fund-raising letter that claimed that he’d been singled out for “special recognition” by Chicago Magazine—and, indeed, he had. He had been cited as “one of the state’s ten worst legislators.”
To assure accuracy, have quotations written out on note cards so that you can read them, rather than relying on your memory. A transition, such as “According to . . .“ or “In the latest issue of . . . ,“ leads gracefully into such material. To discover useful information about the credentials of your sources, check the biographical resources.
Finally, don’t simply accept what experts say uncritically. Experts have been known to be wrong. In 1903 the president of the Michigan Savings Bank advised Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Company, saying, “The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” And in 1946 Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox studios, offered the following prediction: “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”

Listeners as well as speakers have ethical responsibilities. Ethical listeners do not prejudge a speech, but keep an open mind. John Milton, a great English poet and intellectual of the seventeenth century, observed in Aromatically, his treatise on freedom of communication, that listening to our opponents can be beneficial. We may learn something from them and gain a new and better perspective on an issue. Or, as we question and argue with them, we may discover why we believe as we do. When we protect ourselves from opposing ideas, we deprive ourselves of the chance to engage, apply, and strengthen our own convictions.
Just as we should be open to ideas, we should also remain open to people of different lifestyles and cultural backgrounds. We should not deprive ourselves of the chance to explore other worlds. In comparing and contrasting our lifeways with those of others, we learn more about ourselves.
While ethical listeners should remain open to ideas that may at first seem strange or even hostile, we do not suggest that you lower your guard entirely.
Some ideas, after fair consideration, prove to be faulty, risky, or even evil. Not every speaker has our good at heart. Perhaps our best advice to you is to be an open but cautious listener, combining the best traits of ethical and critical listening.

Practice may not make perfect, but it certainly improves a speaker’s chances of doing a good job. While rehearsing, a speaker may discover that a technique that looked good on paper sounds stilted or silly when spoken. It often helps if speakers can tape-record their speeches, leave them overnight, then play them back the next day.
Supportive roommates or friends can listen to the speech before presentation and offer suggestions for further improving it. They should be able to identify the purpose and the main points of the speech. Speakers should imagine their audiences before them as they practice. If possible, they should find a time when the classroom is not being used so that they can try out the speech where it actually will be presented. The more they can practice under these conditions, the better the speech should flow when the class actually hears it. As we saw , practice can also help speakers reduce communication anxiety.
During actual presentations, speakers should talk loud enough to be heard easily in the back of the room. Body language is also an important part of effective presentation. The speaker’s posture should be relaxed. Movements should seem natural and spontaneous. Speakers who point to their heads every time they say “think” or who spread their arms out wide every time they say “big” will seem artificial and contrived.
Gestures should complement what a speaker has to say, not compete with it for attention. Additional suggestions for effective presentation.

Personal knowledge and experience add credibility, authenticity, and interest to a speech. Being able to describe your feelings about a problem will gain and hold the audience’s attention and may make them more receptive. You may not be an acknowledged authority on a subject, but personal stories suggest that you have a special kind of intimate knowledge of it. They make it easier for an audience to identify with you and the topic.
If you lack direct experience with a topic, you can always try to arrange some. Suppose you are planning a speech on how local television stations prepare newscasts. You have gathered information from books and periodicals, but it seems rather dry and lifeless. Call a local television station and ask the news director if it would be possible for you to spend an afternoon in the newsroom of the station so that you can get a feel for what goes on during that hectic time right before a broadcast. Take in the noise, the action, and the excitement that occur before and during a show. All of this can help en
rich your speech. You might also try to schedule an interview with the news director while you are at the station.
As valuable as it is, experience is rarely sufficient to provide all the information, facts and figures, and testimony that you will need for your speech. Your personal knowledge may be limited, the sources from which you learned may have been biased, or your experiences may not have been typical. Even people who are acknowledged authorities on a subject look to other experts to give credence to their messages. Use personal knowledge and experience as a starting point and expand it through research. Prepare a personal knowledge and experience summary. Include on your summary sheet what you know (or think you know) about the topic, where or how you learned it, and what additional information you might need to find. Also jot down any examples or narratives based on your experience so that you can remember them as you put your speech together. Use your summary sheet to give direction to your research.