By Nur Aiman Najiha Azman
18 & 19 July 2020. These are remarkable dates which I will treasure for the rest of my life. Why? Because it was a hectic weekend for some IIUM students, but for me, it was such a meaningful weekend.
CK FAIZAL (his real name, Che’ Kamarul Faizal), a professional host and an emcee in formal and informal events was invited to IIUM for the IIUM Freelancer programme, organised by Counselling & Career Services Centre (CCSC) which focused on emceeing and hosting.
As a former ASTRO presenter for years, a content creator, a TV producer, a host for many popular shows like Hlive!, Diari Akademi Fantasia, and Gegar Vaganza, CK Faizal shared lots of techniques that can be applied and practiced by newcomers.
The two-day programme at Mini Auditorium IIUM had 20 participants, mostly IIUM students.
A former CK FAIZAL
Starting the first session with the story about himself, majority of us were surprised when he said that he was born a stutter. During his secondary school days, a teacher in his school helped him to overcome the stutter and for him to become a better communicator than before.
“The teacher always supported me to go forward from a small competition at school,” CK Faisal said. It might be easy for some of us, but for a stuttering person, he really needs the spirit and strength to just stay on the stage.
CK Faizal, a professional host we can see today, only could speak excellently at 14. Starting from that age, he found passion in what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
Before we started the session, he reminded us that “the key to knowledge is by asking”. In these two days, he always encouraged us to ask.
Ask what you want to know. Ask what you do not know. Ask for confirmation. Ask for anything. ASK.
People who ask shows that they really want to learn and gain knowledge.
Vital things in giving a speech
At the beginning of his sharing, he emphasised on breathing technique. Why breathing? Because breathing technique is vital in giving a speech.
As we are breathing every single moment in our life, there is also a good breathing technique to be a good communicator. A good breathing technique would not let a host breathless during hosting.
Continued with the tone of voice for hosting and emceeing, CK Faizal highlighted three important voice tone that a good communicator should know. It is a voice tone of the stomach, chest and head.
We learned that there is a different function for each tone of voice. For instance, a voice tone from the chest is for people to remember what you say. Voice tone from head to catch people’s attention, whereas tone from the stomach is for normal tone.
The variety of tone can be used according to the situation that the host is dealing with or subjected to the event.
Voice reflects behaviour
“Suara adalah tingkahlaku.” CK Faizal stressed that voice reflects our behaviour. Therefore, we have to put “justice” in every word that is spoken.
This is a very important technique as we are going to express the emotion or the meaning of the words so that the audience can feel the sensation as what we are trying to convey.
For instance, if you said “I love you” without putting the soul and justice in every word, to express the feeling and meaning of the word, the sentences will mean nothing to the listener even it is a meaningful sentence.
We are also given opportunities to read and practise a few professional emcee’s script in formal and entertainment programmes. The best thing here is, we experienced practice with the real script of the event such as a wedding emcee’s script and Hlive! International programme host’s script.
We were also corrected when we did not pronounce the words in a correct way.
These activities are so significant to me as it is my dream to be a professional host.
Emotion transfer
The host of an ASTRO programme, Malaysia Top MUA, CK Faizal also taught us how to do emotion transfer through a few outdoor activities. Here, he brought us to an open space in front of the Mini Auditorium to practise emotion transfer.
Basically, there are ten levels of emotion. Every person has a different way of conveying emotion at every level. To understand our own level of emotion, we practiced an activity in which we have to “register” how we react to certain emotions at different levels.
To register the emotion, we need to react to the emotion at every level. For example, how do we react when we are excited in level 1. Then, how we are excited at the next level. Some people might be relaxed if they are at level 1 of excitement, but jump happily or cry when they are in level 10 of excitement.
As for that day, we practised three kinds of emotions which are angry, excited and love. Angry is the easiest emotion to be expressed while love is the hardest one.
At the end of the activity, we not only managed to differentiate every level of emotion, but we also get to know ourselves better.
It is a fun activity, yet we got to know the other side of ourselves and get ultramodern knowledge.
Stage fright
Besides CK Faizal, we also managed to have a brief session with a famous host, Sarah Zulkifli also known as Sarancak, a mentee groomed by CK Faizal until she becomes who she is today.
During her session, Sarancak shared some tips on how to overcome stage fright. She mentioned that nervousness is very important. Even for a legendary singer, a professional host, the nervous feeling is needed.
To control the nervousness, we must change the nervous feeling into energy and give all of us to the audience. She also said that sometimes people are too nervous until they mispronounced words or stuttered.
In that situation, we just have to be confident and continued with the speech but politely corrected it. This is the part where I am proud to be myself where I can hide my nervousness, therefore people will not see the other fright side of me.
Sarancak also highlighted that the choice of words for formal and informal events are different. Therefore, we have to practise the choice of words as practice makes perfect.
In addition, spontaneous needs to be trained. A simple practice such as talk to yourself or practice in front of a mirror can help to build confidence and reduce insecurities. After that, spontaneous speech should not be a big problem.
It was a fun session with Sarancak because she casually shared her story from the worst experience she had until the best things happened to her as a host.
Storytelling competition
Before the programme ended, CK Faizal challenged us to have a “storytelling competition” whereby we have to make a speech on any topic in three minutes. We were encouraged to use all techniques that we have learned during these two days.
The winner of the competition would get RM200, sponsored by CK Faizal.
The storytelling competition, the most momentous session where everyone shared a story related to their life while applying all techniques that have been learned.
It is such a “roller coaster” session because all of the participants really conveyed their happy, sad, excited and angry emotion in their speech that made the audience also cry and smile happily because we really understood and felt the soul of the story.
There were two winners for the competition who were chosen by CK Faizal himself, Mr. Hafifi and Miss Adilah, the Psychology Officer of CCSC.
Sharing about the “lost” I had in my life, I gave my best in delivering the speech. Surprisingly, I was chosen to be among the winners. I was so happy and excited because my idol had recognised my talent!
The other winner was Muhammad Hakim, a student from Ahmad Ibrahim Kuliyyah of Law (AIKOL). He shared his experiences that really touched our heart regarding an accident which happened in January 2020 that had affected and changed his whole life.
For me, this programme is a meaningful and a fruitful one. Through this programme, I gained many new information and learned new things and techniques on how to be a good communicator.
I hope one day, I can be a professional host just like CK Faizal or even, be better than him. ***
