On 15, April, the first National Primary School English News Broadcasting Competition was successfully held in Hangzhou. 16 contestants participated in the National Final. Some of them are from Grade 1-3 and the others are from Grade 4-6. As the panel judge, my congratulations to all the participants and my big, big thumb-up to the organizing committee.
The reasons for my Big Thumb-up for this innovative form of competition are as the following.
First, news broadcasting is a very good way of developing students’ communication for intelligibility. As we know the main features of news report are short, brief and concise. And words sending the new or key information are normally given by the content words and they are usually stressed. Having a good command of word-stress and sentence stress is the fundamental requirement for good pronunciation and efficient communication because English is a stress-timed language.
Second, news broadcasting help build students’ language in-put. News selected are from 21st Teens and the information covered is normally fresh and new. Topics are various, i.e. animals, plants, foods, sports and science fictions…etc. Students can select whatever they like to read. As time goes on, the in-put of language is gradually built up according to their interest.
Thirdly, news broadcasting help students internalize the knowledge and improving their communication for comprehensibility. Accurate and fluent news broadcasting requires not only students’ full knowledge of the information covered but also a good understanding of it. Last but not the least, news broadcasting serves as a good step for good public speaking. According to the competition structure, besides broadcasting the news, contestants have to answer two questions. One is related to the content of the news. This is a good way for students to learn to retell the news in their own words, learn to sum up the main idea and learn to share with others. Good public speaking skills starts with making a good summary.
I am very happy to see this innovative form of competition is initiated by the organizing committee. The competition is a big success. It makes public speaking accessible, affordable and available not only to those who are talented, but also for those who love English but dare not to speak in public. As the says go: well begun is half done. Best wishes for the 2019 news broadcasting competition.
