Taking New Tasks as Judges for English Speech Contest

SMK NU 1 Karanggeneng was conducting a teachers’ meeting today and so I won’t be meeting with my students. Being free for the whole day, we were asked to be the judges of an English Speech Contest of SMP NU SIMO Karanggeneng.

               We were invited by Mr. Himi, a teacher of their sister institution Ma. Matholi’ul Anwar to criticized the contestants and choose the best out of them.

               The program started with their usual ceremony and so the speech contest started afterwards. We were seated in front of the students, just behind where the contestants are standing. My partner and I decided with the criteria for judging. Physical delivery which includes eye contact, hand gestures, body posture, how the speaker occupies the stage would give them 15 points. Vocal delivery is as equally important as the physical, which includes the tone of voice, pitch, volume, speaking pace, voice animation would give them 15 points as well. The content most importantly would give them the highest points of 20.

               Some of the contents tackle globalization, the use of gadgets, the importance of education, how to become responsible students and a lot of other substantial topics. Given the limited time of preparation, we were delighted and positively surprised that the contents are definitely relevant, timely and speaks a lot of volume.

               Few of the things that the students have opportunities to improve on are the engagement to the audience which can include their eye contact, asking questions to the audience, pausing for a while to elicit and retain interest. Other areas for improvement are the tone of voice, it could have been more convincing by the proper control of volume, pitch and speaking rate. They could have occupied the stage more freely rather than stiffly standing in one spot.

               But the things that we liked the most are their confidence in being able to speak up in front of their schoolmates in English language. Aside from the content, some of them did well in the emotion they poured out in their piece which is evident with their sing-song tone of voice.

               Before the awarding ceremony, we played some games while the results are tabulated by one of the teachers in SMP NU SIMO. We asked them random questions that include the details about the speech contest, ourselves, Philippines and Indonesia. The students who answered received the gifts they are due prepared by the SMP NU SIMO staffs.

               We announced the awardees and they were called in front to get their trophy.

               It was a great opportunity to have been chosen as judges to practice our knowledge about public speaking.