Educational and fun!
We hastily arranged to hold a practice session for the contestants for the Area F-3 Evaluation Contest to be held on October 29. This proved to be both educational and fun.
We watched speeches from this year's International Speech Contest Semi-Finals and had our representatives practice their evaluation speeches. After the evaluation speeches, we had an in-depth discussion on each contestant's evaluation speech, the speech evaluated, and the judging criteria of the contest.
The evaluation speeches for the contest and those at our regular meetings are different in some ways. For example, in the contest, the test speaker is usually someone the evaluators are not familiar with while in the meeting, the evaluators evaluate the speeches of our own members, people they are very familiar with. Another difference is that there are definite criteria at the contest. Today, we discussed the judging criteria and realized one more time the importance of having analytical viewpoints and skills to present your suggestions in the nicest way possible so that the speaker can take our suggestions without being defensive.
Today, the contestants delivered solid evaluation speeches, well-organized with to-the-point analysis, and relevant and important suggestions. Well-structured because they started with a nice and brief introduction congratulating the speaker on delivering a great speech, following up with some things well done, moving on to some suggestions for improvement, and concluding with an encouraging remark.
We enjoyed the session and thought it would be a great idea to have sessions like this periodically.
The Area F-3 Evaluation Contest is on October 29 in the afternoon. Good luck, contestants!!