Great Speech Imitation Competition

Today was a memorable day for some students of the International Business Department in our school. We had a "Great English Speech Imitation Competition." The event was held in a big hall with about 500 seats. My friend, the coordinator and I arrived an hour before the show started since we wanted to check that everything was set. I imagined that the place would be filled with students. When the program started I glanced at the back to see if the seats were already filled, only to find out the the students who came were mostly the contestants and their close friends. I wonder where the others were since we have hundreds of students in our department. There were 18 contestants who showed both confidence and fear. As the show continued I had to listen attentively to each one of them since I had to give comments and also give a closing remarks. I had to pick some important lines from their speeches and at the same time rate each contestant as I was also one of the judges. Honestly it was a tough job for the judges since more than half of the contestants were really great. It was so hard to decide as to who would be the BEST speech imitator. They were so good in imitating President Obama, former president George W. Bush, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Hilary Clinton, Yang Lan of Beijing Olympics, Bill Gates, Sen. McCain, Steve Jobs, Franklin Roosevelt and Madonna. 

I told everyone that they did great. Tried to be specific in giving individual comments, like "you really sounded like Pres. Obama or Hilary Clinton, good voice quality, confident, you maintained eye- contact, relaxed,good pronunciation etc. They all amazed me since public speaking is not my specially. But since I am the only foreign teacher in this school I am expected to speak, usually the closing speech. Opening speech is usually  assigned to the department Deans.

 Anyway my main message for everybody was, "On behalf of the judges tonight, I would like to say, Congratulations on a job well done! You gave us a very tough job tonight. You are all good in imitating these famous people who are doing this everyday. I believe that if you can sound like them, you can be better. I hope that in the future, students will be imitating your own speeches.