I'm not going to start blaming people for my failure. But it is quite shocking to me when my name wasn't mentioned in the Top 5. After all - I was the Champion last year, and the year before that. And I received awards in Junior 2 and 3 too. This not only came as a surprise to me, it surprised the rest of my class, my competitors, and my English teacher.
At the end of the day, one of the other competitors recommended me to go and talk to one of the judges as she fears the score might be totaled incorrectly. But it turned out that the judges are just not impressed with my speech. Upon further inquiry, two of the judges found my pronunciation below average and the other commented that I lack in content and creativity.
They also told me that the winners (Top 2) of the competition did not go with the 'conventional' style of speech, which was to my surprise, as I always thought that speech is a serious matter and cannot be converted into a talk-show format. But apparently the Top 2 did it, and they stood correct - the judges loved it!
I asked one of the judges "Isn't that kind of speech informal?" and he responded with "Since some people write essays in this kind of creative format, why couldn't they make their speech with the same format?". I was totally astounded. Never in my life that format speeches is the same as talk-show. At least my English agreed with me, he told me "What is English education coming to?" when I told him the above statement.
From this experience, I learned that you must cater to different teachers with different styles. One of the judges told me that I have "a great chance of winning" if I "was judged by some of the older teachers", to each his own, I guess. But at the end of the day, it all depends on your luck. And clearly my luck wasn't at its best, but I was thankful for the experience and one of the judges even shared with me some of her podcasts and told me to "listen to them and learn their accents". Guess my speaking days weren't over yet. I will be back!
Even though I failed in the end, I tried and I am proud of it.
