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Terence Luk
Have you ever
joined a speech competition? I can tell you it is a remarkable
experience. I was one of the students in Form 1 who were selected
by our teachers to participate in the Schools Speech Festival.
This was he first time I represented the St. Joseph? College
to take part in a competition.
In October last year other fellow participants
and I started the hard work of practising. I was selected
to take part in the classes of bible reading, verse speaking,
prose reading as well as poetry sight-reading. Among these
four, only three items had to be practised, because poetry
sight-reading could not be prepared. For the training we had
to stay after school. The teacher taught us patiently how
to stress on particular words, facial expressions, gestures
and other public speaking skills.
In late November the important moment came.
After the final rehearsal of the verse speaking, we set off
to the place of the competition. I recited the poem named
?other Doesn? Want A Dog", which was a poem full of mischief,
about how a girl persuaded her mother to buy her a dog. It?
a poem quite easy to express. I exclaimed in amazement when
I was told that I came second in the competition. Apart from
happiness this also gave me confidence.
After the verse-speaking contest, on the
28th of November it came the time to compete in poetry sight-reading
and prose reading. During the poetry sight-reading competition
I found myself the nervous of all. Owing to this it was inevitable
that I could not get good results.
The prose reading competition was a little
unusual. During practices we read part of a book, in fact
only the chapter called ?he Chinese Dinner". Then during
the contest such participant came to the adjudicator and she
would choose a paragraph for the participant to read. Although
I was the first competitor to present, I tried to enjoy the
passage. After reading I gave a smile of relief and bowed
to the audience, while in my heart I felt quite pleased except
for only a few minor mistakes - just a fly in the ointment.
When the adjudicator announced the results, it was rather
astonishing that I came third.
With the arrival of December the bible reading
contest came. This was the last competition I took part, and
unfortunately, the most disappoint one. The part of the bible
I was reading was about how Jesus calmed a storm. It was a
challenge for I was selected to read the King James version
that was in old-style English. The result was unsatisfactory
though I did my best.
After all the contests I found that I had
learned a lot - from my teachers, from practices, from failure
and success. The practices and competitions enhanced greatly
the friendship among my schoolmates, when we shared the experiences
and comments among ourselves. Our efforts and time spent were
rewarded. It was also unexpected and exciting that our dear
principal, Brother Thomas invited the whole speech team to
have a grand dinner. Perhaps, next time when I participate
in the Speech Festival I shall do better.
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