Session Report for the 448th Session

Date: March 21, 2015
Session: 448th
Time: 8:04 am – 11:00 am
Coordinator: Mr Binod Bhandari
Venue: Class Nepal, Maitighar,
Report By: Gaurav Jung Pande

Today, the session started at 8:04 am with Mr. Binod Bhandari as the coordinator. After today’s OCA, Mr. Bibhas Uprety,  granted the permission to start the session formally, we sang our national anthem. Then we introduced ourselves and also stated why we are attending smart club. Most of us told that we are here to enhance public speaking and remove fear of speaking in front of mass.

The Pre Decided Speaker, Mr. Sonam Gurung, spoke on the topic “Drone Attacks: Good or Bad?” He took a stand that these attacks are not appropriate as innocent civilians are also killed and alternative methods are to be used to counter terrorism.

Today’s SDS was Miss Jamuna Gautam. She spoke on the topic “The elemental depth of status of women in Nepal.” She spoke very clearly and confidently with minimal grammatical errors. She talked about how women of all age groups in Nepal are treated inferior to men and also tried to motivate people to act against this.

Mr. Suraj Raj Pandey went to the stage as the Impromptu Speaker and spoke on the topic “”. He discussed about the degrading political status of Nepal and he also concluded that unless there we have a proper leader and co-operation among political parties, Nepal will not prosper.

Mr. Saxat Bhattarai, Mr. Sujal Khatiwada and Mr. Ashutosh Rijal were the commentators of PDS, SDS and Impromptu speaker respectively. They did their job superbly. They critically analyzed the speakers and pointed out their faults. Most importantly, they provided constructive feedbacks so that the speakers can further improve.

Then it was the turn of Miss Pratiksha Baral,  the grammarian for today’s session. She mentioned the major grammatical parts where the speakers made errors among which Subject-Verb Agreement and Prepositions seemed to be the common ones. At the last, she gave some very useful suggestions on how to improve spoken English with proper grammar.

Miss Sukriti Khanal was the Ah! Counter for today. She pointed out the unusual pauses and Ah! made by the speakers in a very simple yet elegant way.

The Time Keeper for today was Miss Sabhyata Neupane. She was very creative and she by provided an analogy of a cooking competition and related it to her time keeping job which was appreciated by everyone.

Mr. Yuvaraj Baral was the Observer. He was fascinated by the efforts we make in smart club to enhance public speaking and was very glad he joined us. He also seems optimistic that he will be a regular member.

The OCA, Bibhas Uprety, summarized the whole session in a comprehensive way. He seemed pleased with the session today. He gave some important suggestions to all the role takers and pointed out a lot of room of improvements to every speaker. He then declared the SDS, Miss Jamuna Gautam, as the winner of the week and handed her a diary.

Overall, the session was very interesting! 

Session Report for the 446th Session

Date: March 7, 2015

Session: 446th

Time: 8:00 am – 11:00 am
Coordinator: Mr Sanjay Sharma

Venue: Class Nepal, Maitighar,

Report By: Suraj Raj Pandey and Aasim Ansari

The session started with the smart people standing and singing the National Anthem of Nepal. Coordinator Mr. Sanjay Sharma gave introduction of Smart Club with a short info. about Youth Initiative and asked the smart people to introduce themselves. After 4 minutes of introduction of smartians, Coordinator Mr. Sanjay stated the rules and regulations to be followed by the people present inside the hall. After he finished up with the formal rules and regulations he then called upon the Pre Decided Speaker (PDS) Ms. Pratikshya Baral to speak on the pre-decided topic i.e. “Rationalism v/s Fatalism”. She briefly described the terms rationalism and fatalism and went on with the content of her speech. Distinguishing the differences between rationalism and fatalism she pointed out how they have been affecting human behaviour in everyday life. She seemed very confident while delivering the speech and her speech was well synchronized.

Ms. Sangita Tiwari with her Pre decided topic “Superhuman memory” was called as a Self decided speaker by the coordinator. She started her speech by describing about a show in one adventure television where she got to know about a person with super memory. She said that she was deeply influenced by that person's extraordinary capability of remembering stuffs. Then she gave audience with some tips to obtain good memory and the benefits of having good memory. SDS seemed confident enough while delivering her speech.

As Impromptu Speaker of the session, Mr. Suraj Raj Pandey was called upon the stage with the topic "Does social campaigns have any impact on society?" decided by the coordinator. Mr. Suraj started his impromptu speech with an example of recent social campaign against acid attak and it's positive impact in Nepalese society. He mostly tried to connect his speech with facts stating some of the famous social campaigns and its usefulness for the reform of society. He seemed confident and delivered his speech with lots of energy and emotions.

After that, the commentators were called upon the stage to comment on the manner and the matter part of their respective speakers. The Commentator for the PDS Mr Bibhas Uprety gave an articulate commentary on the speech by Ms Pratikshya Baral. He also noted that the topic would be more thought provoking if it had been presented in a different way. After that, the commentator for the SDS Mr Roshan Jha was called to comment on the speech by Ms Sangita Tiwari. He was critical of the speech and presented many areas where the speech could have been better. He also pointed out the positive aspects of the speech. Soon after that, the commentator for the impromptu speaker Mr Atul Bhattrai was called upon the stage and he gave an equally thought provoking and productive commentary for his respective speaker’s speech.

Now was the time of the Grammarian Mr Aasim Ansari to point out the common grammatical errors that occurred in the session and also suggest some points to improve grammar while speaking in public. The grammarian showed 3 main areas where the role takers made mistakes, namely linking sentences, excessive use of “a” and “an” and the wrongful pronunciation of some common words. Soon after that, the Ah Counter Ms Samipa Khanal came to the stage to point out the number of “ahs”, “ums”, unusual pauses and repetition of words. After that Time Keeper Mr Deepak Bhandari was called on the stage to give an account on the time taken for various activities that occurred in the session. All the three speakers gave justice to their roles. 

Finally, the Overall Critical Analyst (OCA) Mr Nitish Pathak was called upon the stage to critically analyze the whole session. Mr Nitish gave a wonderful analysis filled with humor and thoughtful points that could help the role takers in the future. He provided some helpful tips to the role takers and at the same time kept space for some productive criticisms.

The Speaker of the Week was the Impromptu Speaker Mr Suraj Raj Pandey.

All in all, the session was great, with a moderate but enthusiastic number of participants. 

Session Report for the 445th Session

Date: 21-02-2015
Session: 445th
Session Time: 7:55 A.M – 10:45 A.M
Venue: Class Nepal, Maitighar
Coordinator: Mr. Pratik Regmi
Report By: Mr Gaurav Pande

After one week of the Valentine’s special session, it was the time for the long-awaited grand finale with “Music and Eccentric” as the theme of the month. This was a very special session as one of the pioneers of Smart Club, Mr. Ayush Shrestha Joshi was present with us as the OCA. Likewise, the second session was also quite interesting as there was a debate in the British Parliamentary Format on a very intriguing motion which was “This House regrets the rise in commercialization of sex in the modern world”.

Unlike other times when the session usually started after 8 am, the 445^th session started at 7:55 am with Mr. Pratik Regmi coordinating the session.  As soon as the permission was granted from the OCA to start the session formally, we stood up and sang our honorable national anthem. Then started the introduction round where we introduced ourselves and also said what our hobbies were. 

The first PDS was Mr. Sanjay Sharma speaking on the topic “Music as a moral law.” Speaking in a low pitched and a dramatic way as he always does, Mr. Sharma started relating music with moral values. He elaborated on how music is connected with the ethics and the moral laws of the society and also how certain types of songs and music can be offensive to a particular group of people and eventually cause conflicts. However, he missed out the emotional and psychological part as he did not speak about how music inherently binds all of us together in an emotional boundary and acts like a moral law.
His commentator Miss Sangita Tiwari, said that she was satisfied with the content of the speaker but there were room for improvements. Also, she pointed out that the body language and gestures were not up to the mark and the emotional touch to his speech was lacking.

The second PDS, Mr. Pranav Kafle, spoke on a very interesting topic which was “Cognitive Musicology: Changing perception of the Modern era.” He started off confidently. He asked questions and gave several examples to define the term cognitive musicology. His speech was well analyzed and thought provoking. However, he was not able to address the “changing perception” factor of his topic as clearly as the audience wanted him to do.
His commentator Suraj Raj Pandey started his commentary with a beautiful song titled “Mituwa” to spread a musical vibe on the club as it was the month of music. He confidently addressed the speaker’s strengths which included his confidence, his gestures and his good hold on language. However, he criticized the speaker on his content part by saying he could have made the speech more interesting with a better content and by addressing the topic more effectively.

The third topic was “Music through romanticism in the 19^th century”, on which the third PDS Miss Pratikshya Baral spoke very confidently. She delivered her speech in a very captivating manner with her superb gestures and great voice modulation. She focused on how romanticism in music started was introduced in the early 19^th century and how it has become so popular in the modern era as well. She was also commended on being the most engaging speaker for the session.
Her commentator, Mr. Manoj Bohara, commented that her speech was a good one in terms of public speaking but she lacked research. He mentioned the six major elements of romanticism in music which the speaker was supposed to do and he also explained which of these elements was addressed by her in her speech. He also commented that the speech was a bit narrow and she could have talk about romanticism in music in a broader, comprehensive way.

The Grammarian for the session was Miss Shraddha Amatya. She started with a nice analogy of a tasty food to explain the importance of grammar in public speaking. Then she pointed out the major mistakes of each role takers which mostly included subject-verb agreement and article errors.

The Aah! Counter was Mr. Binod Bhandari. He did a pretty good job where he clearly stated the number of Aah!, unusual pauses and unnecessary repetition of words made by the roletakers.
Mr. Yogesh Pandey kept the records of time taken by each role taker while speaking. He also gave justice to his role.

It was the turn of the OCA to speak now. Mr. Aayush Shrestha Joshi, said how nostalgic he was to be back in Smart Club after long. Apart from the comments made by the commentators to the speakers, the new comments he gave were about how we should understand that there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence and we cannot be a good speaker if we are arrogant while speaking. He requested us to be humble while speaking. He emphasized that we should be more serious regarding smart club; especially the role takers. He requested the grammarian to also tell us how we could improve on our grammatical problems instead of just pointing out our errors.
After his speech, he announced the Mr. Pranav Kafle as the winner of the grand finale and handed him a diary as a prize.