Foundations Newsletter

During the first two weeks of May, Foundations students from all levels participated in a speech competition. All involved agreed that it was a valuable exercise for our students as well as a good time.

This year, we based the speech competition on the Table Topics segment of a typical Toastmasters meeting. The aim of table topics is to give club members practice at impromptu speaking. This involves being given a topic, 20 seconds to think about it, and then the chance to speak for a minimum of 1 up to a maximum of two minutes. The current president of Toastmasters, John Vogels, together with the two vice presidents, Emma Durham and Clayton Young, are all Foundations teachers, and it occurred to them that the structure of table topics is very similar to part 2 of the IELTS speaking exam. In part 2 of that exam, students are given a topic, some note paper, and one minute to plan a 2 minute speech.

Both John and Clayton are certified IELTS examiners and from experience know that the majority of students ‘dry up’ after 1 minute and 15 seconds. This happens not only because they underestimate the difficulty of this task (and thereby don’t take the time to plan adequately) but also because they don’t have a lot of experience with this type of speaking task. Since all Foundations students will eventually face the IELTS exam, it was felt that organizing a speech competition would be a great way to give students some much needed practice.

In the end, more than 15 students from each level gave speeches to their peers, while those who elected not to speak were at least able to observe firsthand what this task involves and see how hard it can be to speak for that length of time. We are hoping to make the speech competition an annual event … and many students have already inquired whether we can arrange another chance ‘soon’ for them to speak.

Clayton Young