English Speaking Competitiom

The event has been running for some years and last autumn we ran a similar event for French Speaking, here in the UK.

We went across on the Friday and the event started at 6pm with a briefing for our judge, Anne Richardson.  The main event commenced at 7pm and 12 teenagers spoke for 5 minutes each on a topic which they were assigned by lottery.  They had seen all 30 topics before, but were not assigned the topic until half an hour before the start.  At the end of their talk they were each posed a question by one of the jury members.  This was a new innovation which was added following its inception in the UK French speaking competition.

In general the quality was excellent, but no better than the French Speakers in the French speaking competition in the autumn.  The field was divided into anglophones and non-anglophones with tougher marking for those whose family background gave them an advantage.

Following the event we all went to a new restaurant opposite the town hall for a meal with the Chantilly Rotarians.

The following day two Chantilly Rotarians, Jean-Jaques and Gerard, took us to Senlis and showed us round the medieval town.  It was a great morning out, followed by a delicious savoury pancake lunch in the town.

All in all we had a great weekend and many thanks to the Chantilly Rotarians for providing such good company and attentiveness.

Clive Richardson