It was a keenly fought contest with the judges reiterating that it was difficult to “narrow down” the number from five to three.
The moment Azrah Azhar, 23, came on stage, however, the audience was in stitches with her anecdotes on the importance of retaining one’s childhood curiosity and enthusiasm even as an adult. She regaled them about her childhood fascination with being a bus conductor, in her humorous speech on ‘Do not let die, while alive’.
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| Azrah Azhar. |
And she was the winner of the All-Island Best Speaker (AIBS) 2009 competition conducted by the Colombo Toastmasters Club last Sunday at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, coinciding with the Club’s 20th anniversary, while the first runner-up was Poornima Weerasekara and second runner-up Dayan D.L. Fernando.
Preliminary rounds and semi-finals over, the five finalists this year, certainly were an assorted lot. Ranging from a management trainer, two engineering graduates, a journalist to a recent school leaver, they were a dynamic and charismatic group of young people.
The competition had two rounds, a prepared speech and an impromptu speech on the topic, ‘My dream for the year 2020’.
First to come on stage was management trainer Dayan who spoke of the silent killer in our midst, ‘Depression’, followed by the youngest competitor 19-year-old Zara Mathew on ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’.
Then it was Peradeniya electronic engineering student Anparasan Mahalingam who had come down from Jaffna for his studies and been exposed to English as a necessary medium of communication, only three years ago. The fourth contestant was journalist Poornima who spoke on ‘The trick is to not get out’ where she compared life to a game of twenty-twenty and the last but not least was Azrah currently into project engineering at the Peradeniya University.
When the break came before the impromptu speeches of the contestants, it was time for cake and coffee because the Toastmasters Club was 20 years old.
What makes young people want to speak in public?
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| Poornima Weerasekara |
Dayan D.L. Fernando |
Admitting that she was “very, very nervous”, though there was no such indication to the audience, Azrah who won the top prize with her witticism and easy assertiveness, after two tries before, hastens to add that she enjoys herself. This was the first time among her three attempts that she did enjoy speaking.
“I think that has to come with experience and I have learnt from each of my previous experiences. The first time, I was overly dramatic and didn’t connect with the audience and the second time I realised the power of humour, that a bit of humour was necessary in winning an audience over. So I improved over the years and even after this, I will continue to improve on my technique.”
Azrah joined her university Toastmasters Club because she felt the need to develop herself as a professional.
Dayan, of course, is not unused to being a public speaker, it being part and parcel of his profession but he too was nervous before the contest, he concedes.
Meanwhile, Poornima had joined the Toastmasters Club only incidentally, a few years ago when she accompanied a friend for the sessions but continued when the friend dropped out. She feels the need for training in effective communication as she hopes to be a lecturer and considered it useful in her work as a journalist.
“To be a good speaker, you need to expand yourself as a person, not just in terms of knowledge but also how you perceive things and the ability to interpret them in a novel way – that’s after all what makes a speech interesting,” she says, explaining that it is important to prepare even for impromptu speeches. People believed that Winston Churchill was one of the best ‘off the cuff’ speakers but he practised constantly, in his home, in his car and in his bath.
Colombo Toastmasters Club President Yukthi Gunasekera, head of communications at John Keells Holdings, stressed that they draw people out and make public speakers of ordinary people.
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