Last month, our experimental class English teacher Tang Ying organized an English speech contest in our school’s lecture hall. Actually it was more like a contest in which we imitated Obama’s speech “Why Should We Go to School?” About 30 students participated in the contest, and they were eager to show their ability on stage.

    We tried to imitate Obama’s pronunciation and how he acted in his speech. Although we had divided the long speech into many parts and each of us only spoke one part so that we didn’t have too much pressure, some of us were still a little nervous. Everyone who attended the contest was very active. We even evaluated and marked our speeches after everyone finished.

    Our speech contest was a great success. We all tried our best to do well, imitating and acting like Obama! With every single word spoken loudly and clearly, we spoke with passion. Finally, we chose the best speakers.

    The reason why we were so successful this time is that we kept practicing and practicing under Tang’s guidance over and over again for a couple of weeks before the contest. We were divided into groups and the groups practiced their paragraphs separately with group members. Tang gave us a lesson and explained her strategies on how to give a speech a week before. For instance, we should speak clearly, correctly and loudly and pause in the right places. More importantly, we should speak with eye contact and passion to hold the audience’s attention. Moreover, Tang helped me improve my body language, which I was not really good at. We really learned a lot from the class. Above all, what has made this contest successful is that Tang taught each of us her unique methods to give a good speech by correcting our mistakes and practicing sentences one by one!

    My part was about “no one being good at all things” and “we become good at things through hard work.” I quite agree with the statement. The speech by Obama is worth thinking about and learning from because it mentions many problems that exist among not only American students but also Chinese students. I put all my passion and emotions into the paragraphs. I spoke loudly with such good pronunciation that all the classmates heard me clearly. To my joy, I won the championship. It was such a great experience and I will never forget it.