UIC students brought their A-game to the finals of the annual UIC Choral Speaking Competition on 19 March at the F Zone Cultural Plaza.
Eight finalist teams stood out from among the 63 English classes that participated in the first round, and they thoroughly impressed both the jury and audience with their thoughtful, creative and energetic recitations of classic English language poems.
The competing classes brought the audience with them through a variety of themes and emotions, from the carefree and romantic to the dark and wrathful. They used their vocal and visual presentation skills to best represent the tone and the subject matter of their poems.
UIC Associate Vice President Prof Lilian Kwan applauded students’ “theatrical” performances. She noted that it is the “students’ creativity, not only in the way they dress, but the way they present [the poetry], and team work that make such great performances.”
The class Manchester designed a performance that made clever use of a rose, as well as a costume that incorporated suits and masks, to portray the enticing swooning attempts made by a secret lover in John Cooper Clarke’s “I Wanna Be Yours”.
According to Manchester performer Sky Sun, the class, despite having a short amount of time to prepare, practiced many hours every night for a week in order to create a performance that achieved the high standard they had set for themselves. “Everyone was really into this competition. Barely anyone missed a practice,” said Sun.
Manchester’s cool costume was a fitting visual accompaniment to their fine performance
Another team, Essex, presented what seemed to be all the possible ways to symbolise a bird’s attempts at breaking free from a cage, including flying bird imitation, face paint which featured the word “FREE”, and a dramatic glass-breaking finale, in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”.
Essex’s makeup couldn’t have been more appropriate for the theme of their poem
And Liverpool’s slow tempo and ominous wailings artfully conveyed the repressed anger in William Blake’s “A Poison Tree”.
Liverpool’s Connie Xue said that her team assembled many props for their performance, and that their combined efforts promoted a strong sense of camaraderie among the members of the group. “The competition really helped our class with teamwork and unity,” said Xue.
Passionate Liverpool class members
Great effort usually promises large rewards. Manchester, Essex and Liverpool’s performances in the competition received the awards for Winner, First Runner-up, and Second Runner-up respectively.
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| Associate Vice President Prof Lilian Kwan presents awards to the top three teams: Manchester, Essex and Liverpool |
Other classes that participated in the final competition included Aberdeen, East Anglia, Edinburgh, Nottingham and York.
The other finalist teams also gave admirable performances
Inspired by the idea of group effort to improve public speaking ability, the Choral Speaking Competition for UIC students has been held for four years, according to Director of the English Language Centre Prof Eva Lai.
Prof Lai expressed her pleasure at contestants’ increasing commitment to their performances over the years. She explained that “At first, we didn’t have anyone wearing uniforms for the competition,” but that students “eventually started to create uniforms and started to work harder for the competition.”
The UIC Choral Speaking Competition has been recognized as a way to help students improve in the areas of team building, English pronunciation, articulation, and poetry comprehension. In its essence, choral speaking is the art of bringing voices together in unison to reproduce a piece of poetry or prose that highlights, through various techniques of vocal and visual articulation, the imagery and the sentiment that the writer has communicated.
“It’s been a wonderful experience,” said John L. Halstead, Chairperson of the Choral Speaking Competition. “And every year, it just gets better and better.”
Reporter: Chiu Wen Chin
Photographers: Sean Chung and Vivi Xie
Editor: Deen He
(from MPRO, with special thanks to the ELC)
