CONFIDENT PUBLIC SPEAKERS: Contest participants (from left) Rachel Jong, Siti Nurfarisha, Kimberley Wong, Sarah Hafizah, Jasmine Empiang Nanta and Sharon Chin share a light moment.
KUCHING: The inaugural ‘St Teresa Can Speak’ campaign received good response with 70 students taking part in the public speaking workshop and speech contest.
Jointly organised by SMK St Teresa and Harwood Toastmaster Club, the event was the first of its kind, aimed to promote keen interest in public speaking among the students.
Through the programme, students learn and develop public speaking skills in critical thinking and self confidence in public speaking to express themselves.
The contest aimed at enabling the students to practice their public speaking skills to help them in their school projects, future job interviews and even careers commitments.
The campaign rolled off with a workshop conducted by Mike Lim from Training and Development People (TNDP) followed by the contest which was divided into two categories namely prepared speech and impromptu speech.
Opened to the lower and upper secondary students, the preliminary rounds were on from June 19 to 22 where six finalists from each category were selected for the finals.
The finalists for the lower level (Form 1 to 3) were Kimberley Wong who won the prepared speech contest while Rachel Jong won the impromptu speech category.
In second place was Sarah Hafizah while Siti Nurfarisha, the second runner up in the same category.
The other finalists, Sharon Chin, Mildred Rosabel and Azreen Armani, each walked home with the consolation prizes.
In the upper level (From 4 to 5), Liew Jak emerged victorious in both the prepared and impromptu speech contests with Laura Sie finishing second in the prepared speech section while Natalia Vera finished second in the impromptu section.
The other finalists were Joan Tan who finished second runner up in the impromptu speech, Yasmin Khairil, the second runner-up in the prepared speech and Daphne Dihem who walked home with consolation prize with Heather Tan.
The judges for the contest were Stanley Gona, Regina Yap, Sylvia Phan, Margaret Loh, Sahil Singh Dev and Stanley Ngu. They found the students very articulate and mesmerising throughout the contest.
“The standard of their English is excellent and very often their speeches are thought provoking,” they collectively agreed.