National Public Speaking Competition 2019

The National Public Speaking Competition is annually organized by the English-Speaking Union Ukraine. This year the Semi-Final and the Final of the NPSC 2019 was held on Saturday, 2 February, 2019 at America House, Kyiv. This is the fourth time the competition is hosted by America House. We all highly appreciate the opportunity to hold it in such an amazing venue.

PSC is one of the English-Speaking Union most successful and far-reaching programmes. It reaches over 50,000 young people in more than 60 countries across the globe and gives young people practical experience in the fundamental skills of public speaking and it provides them with a platform to express their views about the world and their dreams for the future.

This year 14 semi-finalists, university and school students from all over Ukraine aged between 16 - 20, competed to represent our country in the International Public Speaking Competition in London in May 2019. These gifted young people made great efforts to proceed to the Semi-Final.

The theme for this year Semi-Final Competition is ‘Nature is a common language’. In 5 minutes the speakers interpreted the theme in any way they saw it, but they were not allowed to use it as the title of the speech. Every presentation was inspiring, emotional and persuasive and the understanding of the topic was unique and creative. Each speech was followed by the questions from the members of the Question team, audience and the judging panel.

The speeches were assessed by honourable adjudicators, who were:

1. James Wittingham, Program and Development Associate at IREX in Ukraine;
2. Dr Kristine Nugest, Fulbright Fellow working in the area of education reform in Ukraine;
3. Mackenzie Chang - a native southern Californian Peace corps English teacher in Ispas, Ukraine ;
4. Elizabeth Fawcett, an English teacher at London School of English, Kyiv;
5. Dr Larysa Yarova, ESU Ukraine Steering Committee member, Head of Translation, Applied and General Linguistics Department at CUSPU.

The Question team consisted of the previous year winners of NPSC: Anastasiia Rohova, Vlad Danyleiko, Kateryna Ilchenko and Milaniia Yurah.

Five best speakers proceeded to the Final where they delivered impromptu speeches. They chose their topics 10 minutes in advance of giving their speech and were allocated 2-3 minutes to deliver it. Due to the fantastic technical support of America House, everyone could see on the screen how the contestants were preparing for their impromptu speeches in another room.

After all the impromptu presentations the judges named the winner Yelyzaveta Kompaniiets, a pupil of the 11 form from Pedagogical Lyceum, Kropyvnytskyi, who also appeared to be the best speaker according to the audience choice. The runner up was Oleksiy Chaikovskyi, a student from Kyiv National Economic University named after Vadym Hetman.

All participants received a Certificate of Honour in recognition for their outstanding performances. Dr Nadiya Ivanenko, the Chairman of the ESU Ukraine, and Dr Larysa Yarova, Steering Committee member, awarded the winners with the prizes from the ESU Ukraine. They also received some prizes from America House.

On behalf of the ESU Ukraine community I’d like to thank every participant for making the competition such a successful event. I’d like to thank all the finalists for their amazing and inspirational speeches and wonderful performances. It has been a fantastic day full of sharing, commitment and generating new ideas.

I am very grateful to America House for hosting and providing such a wonderful venue for the competition. I’d like to thank all America House team and its director Christi Holland for their kind assistance.

My special thanks go to the jury and question team who have done great job. And finally thank you everyone, participants, guests, parents and friends, who came to that great venue and through active listening and questioning contributed much to the success of the competition.

Dr Nadiya Ivanenko,

Chairman of the ESU Ukraine