MELTA Speaking Contest
It has become a tradition to hold a Foreign Language Speaking Contest
in the southern district of Moscow. For the last three years the contest has become rather
popular and the number of participants is growing year by year. School No. 1257 hosted
this contest for the second time on the 30th of January. More than 65 participants from 15
schools of the district gathered to demonstrate their skills in speaking 3 foreign
languages: English, German and French. Of course, the quantity of the participants in the
English section was the largest: about 50 people. Three topics were offered for
discussion:
1. Money in my system of personal values.
2. Do animals have rights?
3. The teacher opens the door, but you must enter by yourself.
Each participant was given 3 minutes to share his thoughts on the given
problem. The emotional and fluent speech was highly appreciated by the jury which
consisted of not only school teachers and methodologists of the District Method Centre,
but also the representatives of the Pearson Longman Publishing House and editor-in-chief
of the newspaper English Alyona Gromushkina. All the speeches were really exciting
and interesting to listen to. Some pupils used different kinds of visuals, such as
multimedia presentations or photos, trying to make their speeches more colourful and
convincing. It was extremely difficult to judge and to name the best, that is why there
were a lot of nominations such as “For Perfect Presentation Skills”, “For the Best
Contact with Audience”, “For the Most Emotional Presentation”, “For the Most
Touching Speech”, “For the Most Humorous Presentation”, and so on. Besides the
audience voted for its favourite, too. But it's far better to read the impressions of the
winners and participants themselves:
Irina Kouyantseva – Perfect Presentation Skills and
Audience’s Favourite
Kouyantseva Irina
As for me, I participated in such a contest for the first time. I'm
sure such an experience is of a great value for me. It was particularly exciting to see
the different styles of presenting the material. Though there were only three topics, each
of the speakers managed to show their own attitude to the proposed problems very vividly
in their own manner. This contest gave me an amazing kaleidoscope of impressions and if I
have an opportunity to take part in it again I’ll try not to miss it.
Orlova Stanislava and Chadkova Olga – Perfect Presentation
Skills
We decided to make our presentation in the form of a dialogue. We
differ from one another very much and our attitude to the problem we've chosen (“The
rights of animals”) is different too, but it was extremely interesting and exciting to
share our opinions not only with each other, but with the audience as well. Besides, we
used a multimedia presentation to attract the attention to the animals: to speak about
animals and not to show them seemed to us unacceptable. And we think we managed to prove
that our opinions have a right to exist and it made us think of this problem in a more
detailed way.
Sorokin Dmitry and Klimenko Maria – the Most Humorous
Presentation
Sorokin Dmitry, Klimenko Maria
We are the ninth-formers and heard about this contest last year when it
was held in our school for the first time; we made our minds up to participate in it as
soon as we had a chance. And we did it! As it was a dialogue illustrated by a multimedia
presentation, we were eager to bring some excitement and humour into it. That is why we
couldn't help using some acting skills in sharing our opinions on the problem of
animals’ rights. We managed to show the innocent look of a person wearing the fur of
killed animals and this look not only made the audience burst into laughter, but also to
think about the problem they had probably never thought of. We tried our best to draw
serious conclusions at the end of our speech and we hope we succeeded.
Popkova Maria – a participant
Popkova Maria
You know, I got a lot of joy and pleasure participating in this
contest. Though I didn't win, it was a wonderful chance to demonstrate my skills and my
knowledge of the English language. Moreover, I agreed to participate in it due to the fact
that the topics seemed to me really challenging. I had never thought about the position of
money in my system of values, and it was a brilliant opportunity to think it over and to
express my thoughts to the audience. I’m sure such contests are really useful and I hope
the number of participants and languages will increase.
Students of School No. 1257
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