SOME of the region’s best public speakers were in Tenterfield last weekend as the town hosted area speech contests.
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Speakers and VIPs flocked from all over the New England and Granite Belt to compete, adjudicate, applaud and generally enjoy the occasion.
The competitors were drawn to the Toastmasters Area N25 speech contest held on Saturday at the Salvation Army Hall.
“Toastmasters sure can talk and when they do it’s sure worth listening to,” local Toastmaster, Susan Butterfield said.
Two contests were held, Evaluation and International: in the Evaluation Contest there is one speaker whose efforts are evaluated by all competitors; quite a daunting task for volunteer speaker, Michelle Burton from Liston.
“Imagine six people in a row critiquing your speech! Michelle, however, had given a wonderful speech titled ‘Dreams’ which gave the evaluators plenty to praise plus a couple of gentle points for improvement,” Ms Butterfield said.
Those evaluators in turn gave the judges plenty to think about in ranking their evaluations on points as diverse as grammar, sensitivity, analytical quality and recommendations made.
It was a close outcome with Cheryl Rudd from Glen Innes, first, Ann Mason from Inverell Breakfast Club, second and Stacey Nugent from Federation, third.
“The International Competi-tion was even more closely fought with competitors speaking for five to seven minutes on topics ranging from Parkinson’s
Disease (by a most courageous sufferer) through to Domestic Violence and even ‘Don’t Worry – Be Happy’,” Susan said.
Winners in this category were Ann Mason from Inverell Breakfast Club, first, Tony Hassall from Federation, second, and Elizabeth Lloyd from Inverell, third.