The annual Forum Competition for Senior classes organised by the English Language Centre was successfully held at the YTL Hall on 2nd August 2022. The aims of this competition are to promote the use of English, encourage public speaking among students and create students’ awareness on current and social issues.
The participating panellists, comprising a chairperson, three speakers, and a reserve in each team, were free to pick any topic related to the provided themes. For the preliminary round, it attracted 39 teams in total, which was very encouraging. Each speaker shared their different viewpoints on interesting and relevant topics such as toxic beauty standards, the impacts of celebrities on youths, and sustainable habits to reduce waste. At the end of each presentation, the panellists had to respond impromptu to one question posed by the judges. Besides evaluating the in-depth knowledge of the topics presented, this Q & A session also served as a golden opportunity for participants to demonstrate their critical thinking skills and fluency.
This year, we were honoured to have an external judge, Mr Bernard Siow, an alumni, who won 1st place in The Fifth Asia Pacific Youth International Education Networking Forum in 2018 and was also the best speaker in the Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Negeri Sembilan Independent Chinese Secondary Schools English Forum Competition in 2019. Mr Bernard is currently studying law in University College London.
During the finals, Mr Bernard was overall impressed with the way the forum participants delivered their opening introduction to the forum. He believed that some teams were able to utilise effective hooks to capture the interest of the judges and audiences. He even mentioned how cooperative the forum team was when there was a technical issue with the mic. Besides, he felt very entertained throughout the forum competition.
However, he gave some constructive feedback on students' performance in terms of strengths and weaknesses in delivering their views during the forum. He advised the presenters to be natural speakers and be more genuine while sharing their ideas on a topic. Additionally, he felt the content was presented in depth by the participants as they had multiple viewpoints on the topic of discussion. Nevertheless, he noticed that there were some viewpoints that were a bit seditious and could be controversial in a forum. He advised the participants to be more sensitive when delivering their viewpoints. All in all, he felt that our students did a great job, but there is always room for further improvement.
With this being my first time participating in a forum competition, the training was rough and I had a lot to learn and improve. I’m extremely grateful to have received tremendous amounts of support along the way and even more honoured to receive the Best Speaker award. Honestly, this was the last thing I expected to be walking home with but it was certainly the most pleasant surprise. I will definitely continue to work harder in the future!
《兴华月报》2022年8月号
http://www.hinhua.edu.my/ebook/2208hinhuamonthly/mobile/index.html
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