Forum Competition01

       The annual Forum Competition for Senior classes was successfully held at the YTL Hall on 3rd April 2018 from 3.00pm to 5.30pm. It was organised by the English Language Centre to promote the use of English, to encourage public speaking among students and to create students’ awareness on current and social issues. 

       Forum is one of the speaking activities that involves all the Senior students. The  English teachers organise their students into groups to analyze certain topics, conduct discussions, write scripts and present during the activity lesson. It usually takes about 3 months to prepare and present the topic chosen. The seniors had the preliminary round from 12 to 14 April 2018. To give equal winning opportunities to all levels, this year, the three shortlisted teams representing each level were awarded the First,Second and Third prizes.

       During the finals, nine teams presented various interesting and realistic everyday topics ranging from the much talked about topic on zero waste practice in school to controversial topic discussing the impact of extreme left wing feminist ideology in our modern society. At the end of each presentation, the panelists had to respond impromptu to one question posed by the judges. Besides testing the in-depth knowledge of topics presented, this Q & A session also served as a good opportunity for participants to demonstrate their critical thinking skills and fluency. 

       This year, we were honoured to have two external judges, Ms Jacqueline Pereira, the chief judge, who is currently lecturing in Taylor’s University and her counterpart, Ms Rajamalar Sabapathy who is also a lecturer at Taylor’s. Ms Jacqueline who has been in the field of education for 30 years, is currently pursuing her PhD studies at Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris. 

       After a 10-minute break for the judges to finalize the scores, Ms Jacqueline gave her feedback on the overall performance. She applauded all the participants for choosing challenging topics and having very interactive sessions among the panelists. However, Ms Jacqueline also commented that participants should avoid slurring of words when speaking. They should sound more natural and apply the right social cues when presenting.