Young speakers have gift of gab
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Public speaking has evolved over the years.
No longer is it stiff and formal. Rather than just standing straight and staring ahead with recipe cards in hand, kids today are encouraged to get animated, theatrical even.
First of all, they tend to talk about what they know best — their lives, their trips, their relatives — rather than general topics and they go for humour and dramatics.
Self-deprecating remarks, ironic comments, and hand gestures are the order of the day.
On Sunday at the Legion during the town’s annual public speaking finals, one girl even laid down on the floor briefly to make her point about being exasperated with her brothers.
This year’s contest featured 11 speakers all from Delhi area elementary schools.
Trinity Gates, a Grade 5 student at Delhi Public School, came first in the junior category for her speech about her great-grandmother.
The 10-year-old described how her relative married someone nearly twice her age — “Talk about your age difference,” Gates quipped — spent her honeymoon cooking for 40 men in a lumber camp, and shot wild animals from her kitchen window to feed her family.
Aallana Ramona, a Grade 2 student at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Courtland, took the primary division with her tales about her brothers, making the remark: “They grow up so fast.”
Using hand props to tell the story of the Gingerbread Man, nine-year-old Tori Hansford came in second in that category.
Jacob Mels, a Grade 7 student at Our Lady of LaSalette Catholic School, was first in the intermediate section for his speech on having a phobia of germs.
His brother, Zachary, came in second place in the junior division for a speech on being left-handed.
The speeches that didn’t win were just as good as those that did. Jaeger Rusnak, a Grade 8 student at Our Lady of Fatima in Courtland, gave his speech on laughter. It’s good for your health to laugh, Rusnak said as he tried some jokes on the audience.
One girl in the junior division spoke about how she was “pampered like a princess” after hurting her knee while figure skating.
Parents were completely focused on her while nurses and doctors in the emergency department fussed over her, she recalled.
“If you want to be the main event around here, get hurt, break something, get crazy,” she told the crowd.
Brooklyn Robinson, a Grade 8 student at St. Frances Catholic School, came in second place in the intermediate division for speech on Canadian stereotypes.
Rose Pettit, who taught school from 1952 to 1989 and has been organizing the Delhi public speaking contest for the past decade, said the speeches “are getting better all the time. The judges said they all had a hard time because they were all so good.”
Winners move on to the Zone B contest at the Simcoe Legion on March 2.
Daniel R. Pearce
519-426-3528 ext. 132
daniel.pearce@sunmedia.ca
twitter.com/danreformer