November 29, 2019,

The American University of Ras Al Khaimah (AURAK) held its annual public speaking contest for students.

Jovial Iyaka (majoring in business) won first prize with Roai Abid (English) and Ahmed Sid Ahmed (architecture) coming second and third, respectively. Jovial Iyaka was also picked as the most engaging speaker and Halima Bashir (finance) was selected as the most original.

“I think every student in this university has to have this skill and build their self-esteem once they are delivering any speeches. It helps them a lot in every course they are doing, even in their majors and presenting their projects. I think the skill of public speaking should be mastered by every student and that’s why we organize this event to support the students,” said Dr. Khaleda al Mansoori, Assistant Professor – Linguistics, Humanities & Social Sciences Department.

The three judges were from the English department and were assisted by a time keeper plus a couple of students to tally the scores. Mr. Shadi Al Shidrawi presented the contest.

The judges used the same criteria that are used for international public speaking contests. The score for each contestant depended on their speech construction, presentation and delivery, the content of the speech, language, and voice, with each making up 20% of the total marks.

Each participant had to give a 5-minute speech as their main presentation and a 2-to-3 minute impromptu talk after one minute of preparation.

Students prepared their main presentation based on a list of 12 subjects they could choose from. These covered included food does not make you fat, tolerant thinking is the key to peaceful living, intelligence is not enough, age gives a face character, general education is an important part of education, and people should not text while driving.

Their impromptu ones were based on topics drawn randomly in an envelope from a set of 10 in total. The spontaneous talk subjects ranged widely: the media decides what you think, how do you break habits?, intelligence is not enough, how to boost yourself esteem, the world is a smaller place these days, who has been the most influential person in your life and why, art is essential to life, why is it important to be yourself, if I ruled the world, and real learning does not occur in the classroom.

All the participants received a certificate for their efforts and shared a large cake at the end of the contest.