Speech Contest 2011

This year's Secondary School Students' Annual Speech Contest was held on 17 February in Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium's Mirror Hall. The event was very successful.

There were 31 speakers from 4 different schools. The participating schools were Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium, Võru Kesklinna Gymnasium, Antsla Gymnasium and Varstu Gymnasium.

The 10-membered judges panel was also bigger and more impressive than in the previous years. The judges were Maila Vilu, Eve Unt, Eve Sõmer, Ruth Talmet, Tiia Allas, Marju Purge (all from Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium), Merit Kokk from Varstu Gymnasium, Krista Noor from Antsla Gymnasium, Greete Lepla and Annika Pindis from University of Tartu. And last but not least, Maive Salakka who was the host, the time keeper and the secretary all in one person.


This year's best speakers were:
1. Maili Sikk (Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium, Maila Vilu)
2. Toomas Häide (Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium, Ruth Talmet)
3. Mery Rosenberg (Võru kreutzwald Gymnasium, Maive Salakka)
4. Hele Maria Taimla (Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium, Ruth Talmet).


For the first time the audience could also vote for their favourite. This year's PUBLIC'S FAVOURITE was Sten Toom (Võru Kreutzwald Gymnasium).



Compared to previous years, there were several changes.

• The first and the biggest change was that instead of one topic there were 3 different ones to choose from. In addition, two of the topics required the speaker to make a choice between two opposing statements. The topics were:

1. Hollywood has a positive/negative impact on society
2. Marriage is/is not an outdated institution
3. Lessons for the future

As having more than one topic proved to be a great way to bring variety and avoid monotony, the organisers will seriously consider using this format for the next competitions as well.

• The second major change was in the assessment system. When in the earlier years the judges have voted and chosen 5 best speakers, then this year every speaker was given points by all the judges.

Every judge could give maximum of 12 points per student. These 12 points consisted of four sub-categories for which 0 was the lowest and 3 the highest score. The sub-categories were:

1. contents of the speech
2. organisation of the speech
3. language skills
4. presentation.

Although it took some time for the judges to give their point, everybody on the panel agreed that this system should be used in the following speech contests as well.

Looking forward to meeting you at the next year's contest!

  

Tiia Raag's seminar on methods of teaching teenagers 15 February 2011

In her seminar, Tiia Raag, who has concentrated on teaching young and teenage students, once again shared with other language teachers a selection of activities from her seemingly never ending supply.  This time the activities focused on pair and teamwork, tasks that required concentration and attention, demonstrated how to integrate geography with foreign language learning and in a controlled environment have students practice certain language constructions (e.g. questions, making predictions and assumptions, positive and negative statements).

Ruth's Using IT Seminar, 10 February 2011

In her seminar, Ruth introduced the participating teachers of English with different websites where the  teachers  can combine  their own  teaching materials or use things other teachers have already prepared, communities where  the teacher could work with his/her students as well as keep an eye on their activities  and shared her personal experiences of using all of those wonderful online opportunities. 

Check out

·        Quizlet

·        IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive)

·        LeMill

·        Discoveryeducation

·        PanRaven

·        Spelling Competition