Everything Touches

(2014 HKDSE Topic) Learning English through Poems and Songs - 8. You took part in the Hong Kong Schools Poetry Festival, You have been asked by your teacher to write an article for your school magazine about how you prepared for the competition and what you learned from the experience.

Written before the DSE exam, after the Speech Festival by 4D Edy Wong in Dec,2013

“Everything touches, you’re touching me.” Carmen spoke fondly and ended the poem. Everyone cheered because it was the last time of training. We’d trained for almost a month. For sure, I have learnt to be part of the Choral Speaking. Mr Ng taught us to show our expression and to be emotional in the poem. It seemed to be a difficult task. But we tried our best to practice.

Last Monday was our big day – our harmonic choral verse speaking competition was coming. On that day, we practiced at school for the last time. Mr Ng had invited his wife, Ms Mok, a humorous lady to come and help. 

I had learnt to create pictures in my mind. Imagination is significant for our expression. For instance, “ Bird song, and thunder” Bird song is a symbol of happiness. Birds fly in the sky freely enjoying their freedom. However, a sudden thunder destroys everything. The school of birds disappears in the darkness.

Thunderstorm was a horrible thing. So I created this picture in my mind and tried to act it out in our competition. While say “Birdsong”, we had to raise our pitch, and while saying “thunder”, we had to lower our voice.

After practice, we went to the venue where the competition was held. There were five school teams and we were the last team to perform.

St Paul had sent two teams, which meant they had a higher possibility to win the champion.

I felt nervous that the first team spoke a different version from ours. I thought they were wrong because I had searched our poem on the Internet and it was correct. But later on, the second and third teams spoke the same version as the first team. I started to be anxious, with no hope of winning the champion.

While we were performing on stage, the whole audience were staring at us and laughing at us. And I knew - our version was wrong. We all wanted to put the blame on Mr Ng and let him take full responsibility for it.

The result was going to be announced. My heartbeat raced and I stopped breathing.

Finally, the judged announced, “The winner spoke a different version from the others and we had three marks deducted from them. But still, they were 3 marks above the 1^st runner-up.”

We all yelled and screamed loudly.

A Winner’s Voice     by     F.4D  Ngai Wai Lok

I am one of the F.4 Harmonic Choral Verse Speakers. It was a fantastic experience and I have learnt a lot from the poem, training and competition.

About the training, I learnt "no pain, no gain'. To win or get a satisfactory result, we must practise hard.. Practice is painful and harsh. But for the goal of getting the champion, we must keep at it! Actually, I wasn't willing to recite the poem at first as it was a bit too long, but after a few practices and with the many pictures our teacher found online to help us memorise the piece, I could recite it easily. This proves that reciting things isn't hard. All you need to do is read it a few more times and with some imagination and involvement in the content, you will soon get through.

As for the poem, at first, I didn't notice it much as it was just one of the competition pieces. But after the teacher asked us to give our feelings to the poem and read it with different tones, I started to understand the poet's feelings. The poem became some meaningful and spectacular pictures in my mind. I now understand that there are many things in the world are having relationships with each other and with us. There are so many things in the poem to understand and learn from, things we might have missed had we not gone deep into the poem.

For the most essential part, the competition, there were five teams competing for the champion and two came from Saint Paul's (lam Tin). I think all of us felt nervous while waiting as an audience. As it was our turn, we did our best on stage and performed well. And of course, hard work was rewarded with good result! We beat all the schools and the adjudicator said we were way above them.

Yes, everyone has worked hard and played an important role in this performance. There was confidence and unity among us, the two key elements to our success.  The Harmonic Choral Speaking competition was fun and satisfying. We have learnt much and are looking forward to another opportunity!