From 16:30 to 18:10 on November 28, 2022 (Monday), the fourth session of SHBS Student Leadership Course was held in the school library. We were honored to have Mr. Ma Xujun, an excellent speech training instructor, to share with us.

Highly spoken of in Shanghai, Mr. Ma has close cooperation with many large speech platforms, companies, and enterprises. Having trained many public speaking talents, he enjoys a very good reputation in the field. It was truly an honor for us to have him to share on how to improve our public speaking skills. Therefore, this session also attracted many other teachers and students to join us . His profound thoughts and clear delivery impressed and inspired us a lot.

Mr. Ma first stressed that a good speech must have a clear structure and focus. If you want to cover a lot, you may lose the focus and the audience. We should always keep in mind the most important thing we would like the audience to take away. “Less is more.”

At the same time, Mr. Ma also stressed that a good speech should be a good story. We should try to avoid using many abstract theories or philosophical quotes in our speech, because the audience will not be able to fully understand those. We should take advantage of stories to express our perspectives. Stories can help attract and interest the audience and are easy to remember due to their plots. Stories can also help the audience construct their own information model, and further understand the speaker's thoughts. In this way, we can break the"Curse of Knowledge", which is very enlightening.

Finally, Mr. Ma stressed that content is the key to the success of a public speech. Language use and other aspects are only external factors, not the core elements. Therefore, to do a successful public speech, one must focus on polishing the content, to make it insightful, perceptive, and mind-opening. A speech that can inspire and enlighten the audience must be successful.

All the teachers and students present were deeply impressed and inspired by Mr. Ma's witty sharing. We were also deeply moved by Mr. Ma's professionalism and dedication. On him, we also saw the strong presence and style of an excellent speaker.