International voices on Art and Life

International Student Public Speaking Competition

This year the competition was held on Tuesday the 22nd of August and involved 10 schools. These included; Bendigo Secondary College, Doncaster Secondary College, Firbank Grammar, Melbourne Girls College, Mount Clear College, Northcote High School, Reservoir High School, Strathmore Secondary College Thornbury High School and Viewbank College.

Our judges this year were Karen Money (principal of Melbourne Girls' College), Kate Morris (principal of Northcote High School) and Lea Volpe (acting principal of Reservoir High School). 

This is the third year of the competition and the topic was ‘Art is Essential to Life’. There was a wide range of responses to the topic including discussion of rice terraces, the Japanese tea ceremony, vegemite, quotes from Pablo Picasso and stories about Vietnamese poetry. The students demonstrated great courage speaking in a second language in front of an audience including a large number of Year 10 International students.

All students received a certificate of participation for representing their schools. The judges selected the following speakers for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place:

 1st Tien Bui Reservoir High School

2nd Ngoc Nhat Minh Dong Melbourne Girls College

3rd  Yuzuka Funasaka Firbank Grammar

All the speakers did a great job and we were privileged to have Connie Clark from the International Education Department  in the audience.

Martin Ramsay and Lixia Wang