So... My Fellow Decathletes... (original) (raw)
« previous entry | next entry »
Jan. 12th, 2008 | 06:19 pm
listening to:: "Obstacle 1" - Interpol
posted by: 
a_wmn in 
acadec
First off, hello!
I'm from So-Cal, and my school district pays for this guy to come do Saturday workshops on the various subjects to help us study.
Today we worked on written/impromptu speeches and interviews, because we'll be doing all that good stuff for real in two weeks.
Some of the speeches were showcased (including mine, coughcough), and they were incredibly interesting. However, what I found even more interesting were the challenges some of these students had to face writing them.
For example, one girl, who is dyslexic, had to write, revise and memorize her entire speech in her head because she just can't write well enough. One of my teammates has a very heavy accent, so she has a lot of trouble with pronunciation. Today, she asked the workshop guy if he could help her pronounce "clitoris". Oh, the look on his face! (Her speech was on female genital cutting.) My topic, conflict diamonds, was heavily researched. So much so that my first reading was almost six minutes! This is my favorite topic, so it was very tough trying to kill off parts of my baby. But now, it's at a perfect time.
So, my fellow decathletes, what are your speeches about? And what types of difficulties did you face? Even if they were minor ones, like being too long.