1-14 misunderstanding, a desire to participate, fatigue, or a lack of interest. If you are dealing with young trainees, you sometimes may need to remind them that they must give undivided attention to the instruction. 2. Maintain a high degree of enthusiasm. 3. Speak   in   a   natural,   conversational   voice. Enunciate your words clearly. Make certain the trainees can hear every spoken word. 4. Emphasize  important  points  by  the  use  of gestures, repetition, and variation in voice inflection. 5. Check trainee comprehension carefully throughout the presentation by watching the faces of the trainees and by questioning them. Observing facial expressions as an indication of doubt or misunderstanding is not an absolute way of ensuring  trainee  comprehension.  Some  trainees  may appear to be comprehending the subject matter when, in reality, they are completely confused. Trainees who are in doubt often hesitate to make their difficulty known. They may hesitate because of natural timidity, fear of being classified as stupid, or failure to understand the subject  matter  well  enough  to  explain  where  their difficulty lies. Frequently ask if the class has any questions, thus giving the trainees an opportunity to express any doubts or  misunderstandings  on  their  part.  Based  on  your personal knowledge and past experiences, ask specific questions about those areas which might give trainees the most trouble. Some instructors make the mistake of waiting until the end of the presentation to ask questions. The best time to clear away mental fog is when the fog develops. Mental fog tends to create a mental block that prevents the trainee from concentrating on the subject matter being presented. (Later in this section you will find techniques related to asking questions, calling upon trainees to answer questions, and evaluating answers.) 6. Instruct   on   the   class   level.   Use    words, explanations, visual illustrations, questions, and the like, directed to the needs of the average trainee in the class. 7. Stimulate trainees to think. Think, as used here, refers to creative thinking, rather than a mere recall of facts  previously  learned.  You  can  use  a  number  of instructional devices for stimulating trainee thinking. Among those devices are thought-provoking questions, class   discussions,   problem   situations,   challenging statements, and rhetorical questions (a question to which no answer is expected). Another device is the use of suggestions, such as “I want you to think along with me” and “Consider your reaction to this situation.” Discussion Method Discussion methods are effective in getting the trainees to think constructively while interacting with the rest of the group. Conduct discussions with large or small groups; however, small groups are more desirable. You can control and direct a small group more easily than you can larger groups of 10 or more trainees. If a group is extremely large, break it into smaller groups or teams with a discussion leader for each team. The use of the terms class discussion and directed discussion in this text refer to methods in which you facilitate verbal exchange in the class. To use these methods, first lay a suitable foundation for the discussion by asking one or more challenging questions. Then stimulate the trainees to discuss the basic questions; finally, guide the discussion to a logical conclusion. In the directed discussion, you act as the chairman or moderator. As a result of your questions, suggestions, and redirection of ideas, the trainees in the class become genuinely interested in exploiting all angles of the central problem. They forget the normal classroom restraints and begin to talk to each other as they would when carrying on an ordinary conversation. A true class discussion requires a trainee-to-trainee interchange of ideas. An instructor-to-trainee interchange of ideas during a typical question-and-answer period is not a class discussion. To conduct a class discussion, you must make more extensive and more thorough preparations than you would for a lecture. Although the trainees supply the ideas, you must have a thorough knowledge of the subject matter to be able to sift out pertinent ideas. Be aware of ideas that may lead the trainees off on a tangent; steer the discussion away from those ideas. Guide the trainees away from irrelevant ideas and toward the desired goals without dominating the discussion. You can adapt some ideas to discussions more easily than other ideas. The most easily adaptable areas require trainees to compare, contrast, and weigh facts, concepts, and ideas. They also require trainees to solve problems, particularly those dealing with human relations, and to glean hidden or obscure information from scattered