St Joseph High School emerged victorious from the finals of the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry’s (GBTI) Impromptu Speech Competition held on Wednesday.
St Joseph scored 691 points followed by Stewartville Secondary which scored 598. Speakers displayed much enthusiasm though several of them strayed from their topics, incorporated personal experiences, used poor grammar and mispronounced some very simple words. Some also failed to construct their sentences properly and incorporated phrases such as “discriminate her” as was pointed out by Chief Judge Bonita Hunter who corrected it by inserting the preposition “against”. The judge’s panel also included Kenneth Bentick and Dr Joyce Jonas.
Stewartville Secondary started off the contest with first speaker Kashrell Pyle who made a fair attempt to conquer her topic “If I would travel back in time I would”. She started by pointing out the prevalence of crime in her birth place Sophia and finished by stating that she would influence young people to improve their self-confidence and self-esteem.
She was followed by St Joseph High’s Marielle Bristol whose topic was “Christmas is too commercialized.” Despite grammatical errors she was adjudged the Best Speaker. The only male in the competition David Thomas, also of St Joseph, spoke on the topic “Marriage is an obligatory institution”. He referred to US celebrity Kim Kardashian’s marriage which he suggested was a marriage for material gain and spoke on the virtues of a woman which made him a favourite of the few persons in the audience.
The third speaker from this school did poorly from the start as she was mostly inaudible making it difficult to even hear her name. Her topic was the “Dangers of Social Network Sites.” Chania Rockliffe also represented St Joseph. The other two speakers from Stewartville Secondary, Odissa Marcus and Onessa Roberts made a fair attempt to address their topics.
The judges said the students need to read more to increase their oral skills and to avoid pouring personal experiences into their speeches. However, they lauded them for incorporating humour into their presentations. Both schools won trophies and other tokens for their participation in the contest which included contestants from schools in regions three and four.
Marcelle Hutson of the Ministry of Education applauded the students for their participation in the exercise noting that the competition seeks to develop their communication and public speaking skills.
