18. Speech Choir

According to slideshare.com, speech choirs are performance groups that recite speeches in unison, often accompanied with elements of choreography and costuming to brig the speech to life. 

At Asia Pacific College, the speech choir competition had a Christmas theme and the speech that we had to recite was the poem, "At Christmas" by Edgar Albert Guest. I can confidently say that I can recite that poem from start to end with emotion.  

The Speech Choir competition for BM 151 was basically a flop. Negative I know but the truth. We tried our best with the limited time we had but it still wasn't enough to secure a placing. I was one of the four leaders and after the result, I felt like a complete failure. I felt like I let my fellow block mates down. The other three leaders where Peter Son, Benjamin Bajet and Katherine Camacho.

Firstly we were given the actual piece substantially late compared to the other blocks.  The 2nd half of the trimester seemed to have gone by extremely fast with a ton of work that just bombarded us. It was clear that we were not prepared when the performance happened. We only started practicing with about 2 weeks to go before the actual performance. We also didn't know much about how to deliver and exactly what we could and couldn't do. But I guess that was our job as the leaders 

  

BM 151 during our performance

Secondly, the practices leading up to the performances weren't exactly prudent. After my fellow leader, Peter, finalised the entire piece, we tried teaching our other classmates but somehow it didn't seem to sink in. Much like our performance in the cheer competition earlier in the term, it was difficult trying to control some of our classmates. It was this cheer and chants competition that inspired my 'What is takes to be a teacher?' blog post. There was a lot of absentees and misbehaving students, I felt like some people just didn't care. This prompted Peter to create a set of rules and guidelines to follow. The creation of these rules came from a good place but the execution was not successful to say the least. This created a lot of controversy within the English department. 

Lastly, being a leader was harder then I thought. You need to be organised, strong, have a presence that demanded attention, good public speaking skills and also having the ability to still have fun and bring out the best in everyone. Hopefully I get to improve on my skills especially with the dance competition for PE2 coming up. 

3rd Place went to AC151

2nd Place to MA 151

1st Place to TM151