Mirror Magazine

Your palms are sweating… Your head starts to spin… Your heart freezes as you grip the sides of the podium with all your might…

All eyes come to rest on you as the crowd grows silent…

And the butterflies that were nestled in the depths of your stomach take off.

For many of us, public speech is adorned with the three fine features of nausea, frozen hearts and butterflies. However, the young speakers of the Kandy Toastmasters’ Club and the Peradeniya Faculty of Engineering talked up a creative firestorm, as they competed for the Peradeniya Engineering Faculty Alumni Association (PEFAA) trophy.

The Peradeniya Engineering Faculty Alumni Association in collaboration with the Kandy Toastmasters’ Club initiated this contest for all the schools coming under the purview of the Department of Education of the Kandy district, including the private schools that are registered with the Department of Education. The event was constituent of two branches – the Kandy District Inter School Young Speakers’ Contest 2006 and the University of Peradeniya Best Speaker’s Contest 2006.

At the first step, all National Schools, Central Colleges and Maha Vidyalayas of the Kandy district were invited to apply for the competition. Then, all participants and their English teachers were invited to participate in the orientation programme, which was co-ordinated one week prior to the preliminary contests. This programme informed the applicants contest rules, the judging criteria, as well as the finer and firing points in preparation and delivery of public speech.

The speeches were evaluated with the aid of the Toastmasters International Guidelines of Judging for international level speeches and the semi-finalists were entitled to feedback from the judges. Each participant received an individual evaluation of their speech, which was expected to aid the improvement of their oratory skills. On the final day, arrangements were made to relieve the speakers of their fear of public speaking.

At the end of the day, the best Toastmasters of the hill capital were acknowledged for their creativity of speech, vivaciousness and wit…

The winner of the Kandy district’s Inter-School Young Speakers’ Contest was Ajanee Ranasinghe, a 17-year-old student of Commerce at Girls’ High School, Kandy. Leading an active school life, Ajanee is the Western band leader of the School, as well as a member in the drama troupe, the school choir, the Scrabble club and the photography association.

At the contest, in her speech ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’ she compared the lives of humans to that of a cloud. She spoke of how clouds gather water vapour in their journey as humans do knowledge, and how clouds wander through the sky as we do through life.

In conclusion, she spoke of how some clouds come to an end as rain, which gives rise to new life and how other clouds create storms of destruction. At the end of her speech, she left the audience to ponder over the question of whether they would choose the path of destruction or creation in their lives.

“I have never won a speech contest before, and I felt very happy and a little unsettled when I won this competition,” Ajanee said, adding that she would like to thank her parents, friends and teachers, who supported her through the process of becoming a public speaker.

Chasing the blues away

“I love public speaking as I believe that it is not a mere presentation of information. It is an expression of your innermost feelings,” said Achini Nuwangika Samaranayake, the runner-up of the competition.

Currently a student of Mahamaya Girls’ College, Kandy, as a student of Biological Science, Achini explores her talents as a President Guide, the captain of the school’s English debating team and other activities that involve public speaking. She also contributes to the creative writing website WriteClique, which she says is another successful way of venting her emotions.

As a semi-finalist at the All-Island Young Speakers’ Contest organised by the Toastmasters’ Club last year, Achini is no stranger to public speech. At the Kandy District’s Inter-School Young Speakers’ Contest, in a speech titled ‘Morning Blues,’ she spoke of how many of us feel tense and irritable in the mornings.

Achini highlighted that children, in contrast to adults, actually look forward to waking up in the mornings. She attributed this trait to children’s positive outlook on life. “When I start my day with apprehension of the day ahead of me and the responsibilities it will bring, I feel like curling up and going back to sleep. But if I contemplate my responsibilities from a positive position, I feel a lot better about the day I am yet to face,” she said.

“I would like to thank my parents, my friends – Heshani and Yeshani and my teachers for their continuous support,” she concluded.

Accept what you’ve got

In the midst of older speakers, Kaushalee Kapuge came in third place at the Kandy district’s Inter-School Young Speakers’ Contest. A 14-year-old student at Pushpadana Girls’ College, Kandy, she delves into her talents in Western Music, as a badminton player and a member of both the English and Sinhala debating teams at school.

“In school, we have always had many opportunities to explore our Sinhalese debating skills. But we only started English debating about two years ago, and I was involved in it from the very start,” she said.

In her speech, ‘More Than Enough,’ Kaushlee spoke about the importance of being content with life. She said that many, who were fortunate enough to be granted the gifts of sight, speech and hearing seldom counted their blessings. She then inspired the audience to imagine the fate of those who had to go through life without these senses.

“When we carry out a venture with too much expectation, we sometimes refuse to accept the end result, and hate ourselves if the outcome isn’t as good as we imagined it to be,” she said.

“Humans always want to be the best at what they do. Unfortunately, sometimes we are not the best. Then, we should learn to be happy with who we are, as said in most religions,” she concluded.

The winner of the University Best Speakers’ Contest was Kushalan Premaratne, a student of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The runner-up was Asanka Devapriya, while Dimuthu Karunasekara came in third place.