Ever since the humorous speech contest that I took part last year, I always look forward to the next speech contest. The international speech contest is just around the corner. I have been thinking of what topic should I talk about for this contest. Something that can touch people’s heart, something can easily relate to people’s life. I remember in my project 10: Inspire the audience, I talked about my dreams. I told the audience how I was suffering for my English Language when I first came to Singapore to further my studies and I set a goal for myself to be a great speaker and entrepreneur. Someone told me that this topic is very good for international speech contest. However, I don’t like to use back the same old speech. I want to try something different… I have indulged myself in an idle daydream for about one month. Besides president opening address, I have not created any speech for my projects.

I watched 20 years championship of public speaking recently. The speech that I love most is the”Ouch!” presented by Darren Lacroix (2003 Champion). I love the way he injected his homour to a serious message speech. The message of his speech is dare to fall and we must fall forward.

I always face difficulty in crafting a speech which is serious and yet humorous. Whenever I created a humorous speech, I hardly blended in a strong and remarkable message.

Now, I have two topics in my mind. One is about appearance, another one is about momentum. Perhaps, I will make a decision on Sunday on which topic I want to choose and start crafting my speech. Time is running short.

By 16-Jan, I must finalize the speech and start practising.

This is what I will do to prepare my speech contest:
1) Register myself for the contest
- You must be thinking that it’s a common sense. Yup, it is. In order to participate in a contest, you must register yourself to the contest via your club Vice President of Education. I know someone who took months to decide whether to participate in the contest. If you are still thinking whether to participate in the contest, I would advise you to register yourself first, then automatically you will have the first kick to start off your speech preparation.

2) Watch the past years champion speaker’s presentation
- This will sometimes give me some ideas in how to deliver my contest speech. I don’t mean to copy the ideas of the champion speakers, but to study and modify the ideas that I think suitable for my speech.

3) Decide a topic, and start my engine
- Without a topic, whatever thought in my mind is just purely vacant thought. It’s not a written one. What I need is written ideas. In order to do that, I must first come out with the topic. Then, focus on that topic. Whatever thoughts that I have for the topic, I have to write them down on a small note book or type them down in my PC.

4) Add-in humour
- It’s not a humorous speech contest though. But, I have discovered that majority of champion speakers are humorous speakers. If you are humorous, you can engage with the audience easily and I am sure that the audience will love your speech.