There is no doubt that speaking in public is a difficult task. It requires a huge amount of courage because for a few minutes you become the centre of attention and every thing you say becomes the focus of so many people. Often they will be critiquing what you say and how you say it – certainly it is not easy. Doing this in front of a group of your own peers, however, is an even tougher gig!

During Term 1 all the boys in Year 7 wrote a public speech and delivered it in front of their English class. They had to talk about another boy in their class and argue for a strong belief that this class-mate had. This was accompanied by a visual presentation.

In Week 6 we saw the best of these speeches as one boy was selected from each class to present their speech in front of the whole form. Peter Ross, Lee MacMaster and I were lucky enough to be invited to judge this competition and we were just so impressed with the speeches we heard.

But as if preparing a speech is not hard enough … part of this final round was to make an impromptu speech – a speech where the boys were given one minute to prepare a one minute speech. The topic that the boys were given to speak on was “The best/worst moments of my life”. The way that the boys handled this challenge was superb.

At the end of the two speeches from each boy we added their scores together to finish with a top three speakers for the day. In third place was Charlie Howard (Rozelle) who spoke about Nicholas Robins (Mosman) and delivered an incredibly informative speech. Second place went to Tim Wang (Sefton) who gave a very entertaining speech on Ricky Palmer (Gladesville). Special congratulations goes to Stuart McLean (Hay) who won the competition for 2011. He talked about Josh Ho (Hunters Hill) and spoke consistently well in both the prepared speech and the impromptu. Well done Stuart!

The other finalists should also be commended on a wonderful effort. Tom Carrette (Hunters Hill), Tim O’Farrell (Woolwich), Matt Sullivan (Castle Hill) and Max Tassell (Denistone) did so well to be selected from their classes and then spoke exceptionally in the final. In particular, Max Tassell should be very proud of his efforts, achieving the highest score in the prepared component of the speeches.

Hopefully this has been a wonderful experience for all boys in the form – a chance to build their confidence and develop their skills in speaking which we know becomes so important in later life.

Photo 1:  Charlie Howard delivers his speech in the final.

Photo 2:  Stuart McLean celebrates his overall victory with the cup.

Photo 3:  Max Tassell gives his prepared speech which scored the highest number of points in that section.