KuMatrix

What an awful title that doesn’t make any sense! Well, good evening dear toastmasters and welcomed guests, let me slow down, and set up some context first.

Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. It is infamous for its contribution to materialistic lifestyles and unsustainable development on our planet, thus it is bearing a lot of criticism. However, in my own experience with consumerism, I found it is not all negative. Actually I learned a lot of lessons from it, real and meaningful enough for me to even call it my mentor.

Good evening dear fellow toastmasters and welcomed guests. Nice to meet you! My name is Rxx. Today I want to share and let you know about American Sign Language (ASL). Are you ready?

Sign language, as its name indicates, is the language used by people who may have hearing problems. How does it work? Let’s imagine that we are now living in a world without sound. How are we going to communicate without using our voice? If you think about it, well, it is actually not anything new to us. Without even being aware of it, we all communicate in various ways other than talking, all the time. Those include literal methods such as handwriting or text messaging, as well as other approaches such as our gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions. By saying that, I’m already mentioning 3 key components of sign language: gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions.

To style or not to style, it is the question. By saying style, I mean “communication style”, which I learned about in Toastmasters training program, the Pathway. Though I don’t totally agree with this concept itself, on which I’ll explain why later, for now let me just share about what it is.