I am privileged to have been associated with the competition for ten years. The speeches at this year’s contest impressed the audience and judges with powerful, skillfully developed arguments, elegance of text, richness of language and natural delivery.
As with any language task, preparing a speech requires us to focus on both form and content. We are concerned with both medium and message. But which comes first? The formula-based approach to speech-making starts with form rather than content and focuses on how the material is presented and delivered. Unfortunately, when we attach too much importance to form, we run the risk of neglecting the substance of a speech.
The winning speeches at this year’s competition had very substantial content. After all, a speech competition for bright university students is the place for intellectual and linguistic fireworks. Rich ideas need to be encoded through rich language, so the ambitious speeches required a wide range of low-frequency vocabulary, as well as plenty of synonyms to avoid repetition of the key words. The star performers were those who could demonstrate a confident control of a range of syntactic structures. Finally, weaving the ideas together into a single coherent text called for a good command of cohesion and text structure.
Many speech delivery techniques can be acquired in a matter of hours, especially with the help of a good trainer. However, reaching a very high level of proficiency in a second language requires thousands of hours of hard work over several years. For students who already possess a competent command of English, the additional training required is not particularly daunting.
教师可在日常教学中为学生示范英语演讲技巧
John Schmidt
前TESOL董事会成员、德克萨斯国际教育联盟强化英语项目学术协调人
Having represented TESOL International Association as a judge in the Grand Final of the competition, I congratulate all the contestants. They are all winners who have achieved an advanced level of oral proficiency in a foreign language and mastered effective presentation skills. They crafted profound messages in their speeches and confidently delivered effective performances during the competition. Their remarkable accomplishment as eloquent speakers of English will serve them well in their academic and professional pursuits.
Teachers and students of English can aspire to emulate these outstanding contest finalists in their classrooms and in their life experiences. ELT educators can model public speaking tasks for their students. English teachers can benefit from ongoing, systematic development of their own skills as public speakers, skills that overlap with those of classroom instruction but which include a separate subset of competencies.
At the Texas Intensive English Program (TIEP) in Austin, Texas USA, we instruct English educators to study in teacher training institutes. Public speaking courses prepare them to present in English to school groups and community audiences, and to professional teacher organizations in their countries. Students from around the world develop their oral and other language skills in Austin to enhance their education, to prepare for American university study, or to upgrade professional communication skills in English for their jobs. Finally, international high school students attend language programs, emphasizing spoken English production.
有意义的、具有交流互动性的教学活动应被鼓励
David E. Shaffer
韩国朝鲜大学教授、韩国TESOL光州分会主席
The finalists, three-fourths of whom were female, were the cream of the cream of the crop. They had made their way through a rigorous selection process to the finals, spawning high expectations from me of their English skills.
The contestants had a relevant but complex topic to speak on: Cultural Clashes vs. Coexistence between China and the West: My Personal Perspective. This was followed by an impromptu speech for which the contestants had a very limited time to prepare. These were followed by a Q & A Session with questions from three question masters.
The prepared speeches were truly outstanding. Equally outstanding were the impromptu speeches, making judging anything but an easy task. It was the general opinion of most speakers that China and the West need to better understand and accept each other. Both the McDonald’s restaurant chain and the movie Kung Fu Panda were repeatedly drawn on as examples. It was easy to recognize from the intelligent reasoning exhibited in both the speeches and answers to questions that these contestants would be among China’s next generation of leaders.
I have not visited any of China’s schools or taught students in China, but I do know the Chinese students coming to my university in South Korea. I therefore assume that Korean and Chinese English education must be similar. If this is correct, teaching methods need to move away from being test-driven. There is need to lessen the emphasis on grammar rules and vocabulary memorization and increase the emphasis on acquisition through practice in meaningful, communicative activities.
创造性、真实性和广博的知识是成功演讲的要素
Joanna Radwaska-Williams
澳门理工学院贝尔英语中心英语教授
One thing that impressed me the most was the high standard of English among Chinese youth. The contestants were quite at home in their adopted language. This was especially impressive among the primary and junior high school students.
Creativity is essential to making the content of a speech interesting. Creativity can have different guises: it can be verbal creativity, being especially felicitous with word choice; it can be creativity of ideas, which consists in their originality; or it can be a creative way of responding to the topic set by the organizers. For example, in the Primary School Category, the set topic was “I have a great invention”. This was a topic that encouraged creativity, and we had some incredible inventions, ranging from a new design for a seismograph to detect earthquakes, to a solar-powered umbrella that can serve as a battery recharger. The contestants employed their creativity to describe the details of their inventions and the reasons why the invention would be needed by society. I think that this was a challenging topic for primary school children, but the success of it shows that a mental challenge is a good thing.
Related to creativity are the criteria of authenticity and knowledgeability. Authenticity means drawing upon one’s personal knowledge and life experience. For example, one of the contestants in the University Category spoke about her grandfather who, while participating in a traditional festival, combined traditional dance with some disco movements, which was a sign of how times are changing. The description was interesting and even a little funny, and grabbed the audience’s attention. As an example of knowledgeability, I remember that one of the senior high school contestants gave an impromptu speech about human cloning, and when asked a follow-up question about animal cloning, said that it could be safe and beneficial, because nowadays we have advanced techniques like gene sequencing and in-vitro fertilization. Cloning animals could help to solve problems like food shortages and saving endangered species. Given the pressure of a fast Q&A, this is a knowledgeable response.
Authenticity and knowledgeability are very important because they give the contestants confidence and make it possible for them to interact well with the audience and the judges. A speech is successful when members of the audience feel that they have learned something interesting, which comes uniquely from the contestant’s life experience or knowledge base.
