EWRF Junior Club: Speech and Debate Workshop

Enhancing speech and debate skills among the students

Acquiring the skills and tips of public speaking and debating would enable one to become a good public speaker and debater. It would be very helpful and useful if one had acquired them at an early age. Bearing this in mind, EWRF in collaboration with the NIE Unit of New Strait Times held a Speech and Debate Workshop for Klang-EWRF Junior Club members on 24th Aug 2007 at SJK (T) Klang. The workshop was attended by 27 students aged 13 years old who received their primary education from Tamil school.

The workshop provided due emphasize on public speaking and debating skills and it was well received by the young students. “If trained well, they would be highly confident in delivering orations, speeches and debates”, said Mr Jacob of NIE who facilitated the entire workshop.

Mr Jacob explained to the participants that first impression is important for a public speaker or debater. For the opening, the speaker should be able to seize the attention of the audience, by amusing them at the same time, speaking appropriately and showing the right body language suiting the occasion. “At the beginning of the speech tell your listeners the areas which are going to be covered, and then at various stages remind them of the points you have already established”, elaborated Mr Jacob.

Each student during the workshop was asked to prepare a short speech about their selves. Then each of them was given a chance to stand in front of the participants and speak on what had been written by them. At the start, most of the students were nervous and less confident while delivering the speeches. However Mr Jacob guided each of them by commenting on each student’s presentation by reflecting on their mistakes and also improvements.

After lunch, Ms Subita Nair, Executive Director of EWRF gave a brief speech to the participants. In her speech, she encouraged the students to make full use of what has been carried out for them through the Junior Club. “EWRF would carry out more beneficial programs like this for the students throughout the year”, she promised. She also announced that EWRF would reward those who perform well in their studies and actively participate in all programs carried out by EWRF Junior Club. Upon hearing her announcement the students were buoyant.

Then the students were guided through various debating techniques. Mr Jacob divided them into two groups. Then each group was given few topics to debate on. While observing the body language of the students and listening to their points, Jacob coached the students on the dos and don’ts of debating by identifying and correcting the mistakes which were made by the debaters. The students seemed to have a lack of knowledge on the given topics. Thus Jacob inspired them to read newspapers and magazines to enrich their knowledge and also to improve their command of English.