One voice…

A friend of mine called me one day asking me if I could help out with the school team’s preparation for the Sibu-level Inter-school Choral Speaking Competition 2009. I think some of you may not even know what on earth choral speaking is.

The first time I saw it myself was in 1992 when I brought my school debate team to the national finals in KL. There was a school (Can’t remember the name now) presenting that while the judges were deliberating on the results. It is actually just a group of students speaking in unison…and though the competition started earlier in the state, it was only in 2002 that one was held for schools in the Sibu division. My daughter was in the primary school level and she and her friends did Roald Dahl’s “Little Red Riding Hood”. You can see another school (from don’t know where) doing that same script in this video clip:

In my honest opinion (and I’m not being biased), I think my daughter’s team did it much better than this, but went a bit too fast – like a machine gun, so they did not win.

In the meantime, I was roped in to help with my own school team for the secondary-school level. At first I thought I would just help by doing the script but when I went to see the presentation, it was really really bad, to put it mildly. My daughter tagged along and even though she was only in primary school at the time, she could see that it was such a drag. So even though my experience was limited to that one time that I saw some people doing it in KL, I was forced to take over to do the grooming and the training and what not (You will never learn something unless you  get down to it and DO IT!!!) while the other teacher eventually supervised the DAILY practices…and we emerged champion! The first ever in Sibu…but because there was a whole lot of bickering in Kuching that year, so much so that the education director then called it “quarrel speaking”, they decided to do away with the whole thing for the whole state, so we never had a competition again after that. What a relief that was! LOL!!!

I don’t know what happened but they revived it last year, so this year, since it was my friend who called me, I just could not refuse…and I went to the school one Saturday morning to give my two cents’ worth…

CWK Cheng’s photo from Facebook

I’ve used the thumbnail version of the photograph for obvious reasons. ROTFLMAO!!! …Anyway, back to what I was saying, I did not do very much actually – just gave my opinions on how they could improve the script and a few pointers on the presentation regarding things like enunciation, articulation, dramatisation and so on…and the rest was up to them.

They managed to emerge 1st runner-up eventually and considering that the previous year’s team was not placed at all, I would reckon that was a great step forward. I don’t know if Yan‘s son was in this particular team of Form 1 and Form 2 students. Well, congratulations to the teachers and the students! Keep at it and try again. If you all start earlier and have more intensive practices (I heard they pushed forward the date of the competition – by almost a whole month! Ah well, what to expect from those people in the department!!! Tsk! Tsk!), you should be able to clinch the coveted title next year. Good luck… (Pssst!!! Don’t call me! Hehehehehe!!!)

Incidentally, I think this is one nice song, especially for those taking part in the inter-school choir competition…

How do the rest of you feel? Anyway, I hope all of you like the song, and do have a blessed Sunday.