Practice, Practice, Practice

April 27, 2009

And not just for the shooting range and hand-to-hand combat etc, but practice, practice, practice for your tests. Sounds way too easy you think? Then think about this one – the B-PAD where you have to give oral responses to simulated situations on videos you watch for 20 minutes. Then you have to provide an oral reply to what you would do to handle each situation. Your reply is taped and played for the examiners later.

Now do you think this is easy – orally telling a camera how you would deal with such and such a scenario without saying uhm, you know, uh well, or uh sixty seven times in the first few sentences? This is the first time you will have even been faced with talking to a camera to tell them how you’d handle a touchy policing situation. You aren’t talking to real people. You are talking to figures on a TV screen who look like they are listening to you.

You know by now that the B-PAD gives the examiners an idea of whether or not you will be effective working with people on the streets. This test is really assessing your people skills and level of common sense. It’s not a personality test. The long and short of it is this test is looking to find out if you are able to deal with people with honesty and respect and it does that by assessing your behavioural skills and abilities.

This is all well and good, and you are likely thinking you will zoom through this test “No problemo.” Well, if you sound like Mickey Mouse on a bad hair day or Wiley E. Coyote with his paw in a trap, think again. If you stumble, mumble and otherwise make mincemeat of your sentences, syntax and ability to be heard, guess what? You are not going to do so well on this exam.

What do you do about it? Like the title for this blog implies, practice, practice and practice at home with your own video set up. This could be as simple as using a webcam to practice, so there really is no excuse for not practicing due to expensive equipment costs. And do it until you are sick of it, but have a flawless delivery. It is crucial you come across sounding like you know what you are talking about, in a clear, concise and intelligent manner. Once you have the ability to speak fluently mastered, then work on inflections and other small polishing points that will make your delivery shine.

If you work on this hard enough, you will not only do well on your B-PAD test, you will impress the examiners with your style, aplomb and manner of presentation. So, practice, practice, practice. What more can we say?