Ke Ping
Dear Young Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Coaches, Colleagues and
Organizers of the Contest, Dear Parents:
It is a great honor for me now to offer
some concluding remarks on behalf of the judging panel
as this year’s Jiangsu Navigation Cup English Speaking Contest draws to its
close.
During the past few weeks or months,
you, the contestants, your teachers, parents, and other stakeholders have been
intensely involved in making preparation for this contest. You might have
worked so hard that you lost your appetite and sleep. Now the competition is
ended. I guess some of you might want to say: “Thank God, it was over!”
As judges, we have this to say to you:
rest assured that your labor is not lost; the remarkable, sometimes
spectacular, presentations our contestants made on this stage yesterday and
today convinced us that they have learnt and mastered many skills in English
public speaking and televised debate; they put their heart and soul into the
business and achieved what most of their peers did not or have not yet
achieved. We would like to give our heart-felt congratulations to each and
every one of them!
We should also thank the contestants and
parents for the trust they placed in us. We are impressed, and sometimes quite
moved, by what many contestants chose to share with us in their presentations:
their favorite toys; their idols and role models (such as Obama and Ivanka);
their thoughts and feelings; their dreams and hopes; their values and
confusions; their care for their parents and younger brothers or sisters; their
recognition of the importance of self-discipline and their struggle for
independence as young adults; and their concerns for the passenger deaths in
the Chongqing bus incident and for the distress of children in Syria and other
Middle East countries ravaged by wars.
Dear contestants: we would remember all
these things you spoke about in your presentations.
Any problems? Sure, as we all know only
too well, there are always problems.
Public speaking and debate is an
aged-old art as well as craft. Nearly everyone speaks in public at some time or
other, and those who perform the task well often become leaders (Public speaking. In EB 2010 [DVD-ROM], Britannica Student Library).
Public speaking serves three general
purposes: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. With reference to these three purposes and the fact
that we are to fulfill them using a foreign language―English―in the
context of speaking competition, we judges compared notes after various
sessions of the contest and decided that there is still a lot of room for
improvement in the presentations of the contestants of both the junior and
senior groups. Now,
I’d like to share with you some suggestions for improving the most common and outstanding
deficiencies or shortcomings we found in your presentations:
To
inform means
you provide true and meaningful information.
Speakers must win the audience’s
credibility or belief; they do so by being well prepared, by understanding all
sides of an issue before speaking about it in public, by showing respect and
understanding for their audiences, and by demonstrating interest in their
subjects (Based on Public
speaking. In EB 2010 [DVD-ROM],
Britannica Student Library). Quite a number of
contestants, however, failed to do so, e.g.
■ Boy spent
most of the time narrating a boring, painful process in which he tried to find
a topic for the prepared speech in vain, and ended up by concluding that the
process is the real, interesting thing.
■ Boy who
likes “girlie pink”: “People should be judged by their qualities {what quality?
biological or social?}, not their gender.”
■ Girl who
answered the question “how can we make sure that we can still eat safely?”
spent almost all her time talking about what the government should do.
■ Girl, in answering
a question involving her parents, talked in a repetitious way: first about her
father, then her mother; then her father again, and then her mother again,
making the audience both confused and bored.
■ Girls
spoke to the screen, with their backs facing the audience
To
persuade means
to change or otherwise affect the behavior or mindset of other people through
reasoning or argument. Examples of persuasion most often include persuading an
audience to adopt new opinions, to take certain actions, or to see the world in
a new way (Public speaking. In
EB 2010 [DVD-ROM], Britannica
Student Library).
For effective persuasion, you must learn
and use good ways of reasoning. Logic and sound argument are the keywords here.
Logic helps a speaker to present an argument in a fair and reasonable way. It
also helps a listener to understand a speaker’s purpose.
In the presentations we judged, we
noticed some prominent logical errors, e.g.:
■ Girl, in
answering the question “who should take care of the new-born baby: the man’s
parents or the woman’s parents”, replied that she should, because she loves
babies (non sequitur [a statement that does not have any connection with what
was said before]).
■ Girl, in
answering the question “What would you think if boys in your class began
chasing the girl who received plastic surgery”, answered just emotively “I
don’t like such girls” instead of looking at the issue from the boys’
perspective.
■ Girl, in
answering the question “What did your grandma (who secretly gave her pocket
money when she was alive) teach you”, answered “honesty” (violating the “law of
contradiction”).
This means to create a good feeling,
amuse your audience, or make them enjoy what you wish them to enjoy only where
it is desirable and appropriate. Our hearts were warmed by the sense of humor
or cheerful mood communicated by some contestants, and we do appreciate them.
But too much entertainment is a no-no on such an occasion simply because what you
enrolled in was a speaking contest instead of a theatrical or music
performance. The judges expect to see the quality of your thinking and your
ability to deliver orally the results of your thinking. Too much entertainment,
especially of the purely imitative kind which we found in so many movie dubbing
shows, would only make the judges feel bored and tired.
For the prepared speech session, we
suggest that you concentrate on one significant topic or subject, investigate
it, analyze the result of your investigation to form your own judgments or
conclusions before presenting them in an effective way. You may support your
point or tinge your argument with some entertaining humor or media clips, but
see to it that your audience will not be fed up with unexplained or distracting
media use in which only you yourself are carried away by an unrestrained flow
of your own extravagant feelings.
English is not our mother
tongue. It is a language different from Chinese in many ways. It has its own
rules of pronunciation, writing, grammar, usage and discourse structure. You
must treat these rules or “laws” with empathy and respect in order to use the
language correctly. Whenever you’re not absolutely sure of the correctness of
anything you’re to speak out or write down, consult reference tools and do all
necessary researches to make sure that it is both right and appropriate. So,
you should pronounce/write:
■ perish, not “parish”
■ work, not “walk”
■ admirable, not “/ad`mirerbl/”
■ gender, not “/ji:n/”
■ wars, not “worse”
■ heart, not “hurt”
■ world, not “word”
■ unre`mitting not “un`remitting”
■ wide distinctions, not “wild
distinctions”
■ civic virtues, not ”civilized qualities”
■ With tears filling my eye, not “With
tears filled my eye”
■ The answer to this question depends.,
not "This issue depends.”
■ I prefer living in villages., not “I
prefer to live in villages.”
■ I don't agree with it, not “In my
opinion, I don't agree with it.”
More errors can be listed, but I won’t
go along.
Dear young contestants, you live in an
age in which spoken communication is getting more and more important. An
effective command of the art and craft of speaking will do you a world of good
in your lifetime.
It is the hope of all the judges in this
panel that your experience of participating in this year’s Navigation Cup
contest will help you to evaluate the progress you’ve made in learning English
public speaking and boost your confidence in your general abilities as well. We
wish you all good luck in the remaining years of your high school life.
Thank you!
(Browne Holiday Inn, Taihu
Lake, Wuxi, China, November 24-25, 2018)