Rita's school life

Good evening everyone. Before my speech, I want to ask some questions to you. The first question is for the married people: “Did you get any premarital education or counseling before you married?” (Pause and wait for audience’s response) “No, nobody got the premarital education? Well, I’m not surprise your answer. The next question for the single people: “Do you plan to attend a premarital education?” (Pause and wait for audience’s response) Well, not many have the plan. I think maybe you don’t know what “premarital education” is or just like most of people don’t think it’s necessary to do that.

According to statistics included on the Ministry of Interior Department of Statistic website report on population are the marriage is 160,249 couples in 1995 and 141,140 couples in 2005. The divorce is 33,358 couples in 1995 and 62,650 couples in 2005. That means the rate of divorce increase 1 time in these 10 years. There were 12.5 couple divorced in every thousand marriage one. In a simple number to remember is that was 172 divorced everyday in 2005. That’s not a good new for us, right? Should we still keep single to avoid divorce, the bad ending? Or the married couple should be cautious and anxious about their marriage?

Fortunately, our government the Ministry of Education had announced and executed “Family Education Law” in 2003 that is the first law to legislate in the world. One rule of the law is for engaged or premarital couple to provide 4 hours premarital family education to bring up the right concept of marriage and improve the satiation of family.

In a report on Premarital Mentoring Program by Robert Oglesby, Director, Center for Youth & Family Ministry in America, since 1995, he has offered a premarital mentoring program and lead by marriage mentors. Over the 10 years, about 320 premarital couples were mentored by 35 married couples.

Only 4 out of 320 couples have divorced (success rate of 99%) and between 15- 20% (about 60 couples) of the couples canceled their wedding plans. The four couples that got divorced were the “Conflicted type” and they were encouraged to delay their marriage but they declined.

So, “Is Premarital Counseling or Education for You?” The short answer is a resounding YES. Getting married without pre-marriage preparation is like starting a business or any important venture without preparing. Many happy engaged couples assume that they won't divorce. Some mistakenly believe that having lived together or known each other for a long time will prepare them for marriage. Surprisingly, research shows that cohabiting couples have no better chance at marriage success than others.

Most couples just don't realize that good, skill-based pre-marriage education can reduce the risk of divorce and lead to a long-term happier marriage. It can also reduce the stress of the pre-wedding period. Just a little effort can make your worries vanished over the long run. You can ensure that your dreams of a great marriage and a great life are realized.

Where to get the education program? Most of the local government had established Family Education Center in Taiwan; you may touch them for your necessary. If you attended the unite wedding that hold by Taipei City Government. They also provide the similar course but the content not very good for improve the relationship in your marriage. My suggestion is a good premarital education program that should have six goals to reach, like:

1. To explore Relationship Strengths and Growth Areas
2. To learn Communicate Skills (Assertiveness and Active Listening Skills)
3. To learn how to resolve conflict
4. To help the couple discuss their Family-of-Origin
5. To help the couple with financial planning and budgeting
6. To focus on personal, couple and family goals

Now, I am working for Focus on Family Foundation, The business is promoting Prepare/Enrich Program to help premarital or marriage couple. The program was developed by Dr. Olson, Director of Life Innovation, America. If you have any question or need you can touch me then I will arrange a good counselor and teacher for you.

These are our magazine about marriage and family. It’s very popular in church; you can take a look for reference.

Thanks for your attention.

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Speech Evaluation

From Rebecca：You’ve made a good effort, but your speech content didn’t fit my request for controversial. The speech you made is like informative. So, next subject about informative you should prepare another opinion speech.

There were ten classmates gave me the evaluation and I calculated the average points as below.

* Clarity/Intelligibility：2.6 * Float：2.5
* Content：2.85 * Voice(Volume, Pitch, Rate, Pauses)：3.1
* Vocal Variety：3 * Eye Contact：3.2
* Body Language (Posture, Facial Expression, body Movement)：2.9