Category: Oracy

English Speaking Board International) Ltd. held its second Young Speaker of the Year awards on Saturday November 12. Winners travelled to The Old Palace in Worcester to attend the celebration and receive their prizes.

The five winners were selected from 14,000 youngsters who took ESB speech examinations in 2015/16.

The 2016 winners of English Speaking Board’s Young Speaker of the Year were:

Gwendoline Hall – Red Maids’ School, Bristol

Matthew Grayson – Wakefield Independent School, West Yorkshire

Eleanor Latham – Blessed Trinity RC Collage, Burnley

Katie Tarrant – Rainham Mark Grammar School, Kent

Harriet Lang – Moreton Hall School, Shropshire

Each student performed for an audience of family and friends during the celebration, impressing everyone with their skills and abilities, and their maturity and confidence.

ESB’s Chief Executive, Tina Renshaw, says:

Our mission at English Speaking Board is to extend communication skills, to offer opportunities to excel and to inspire confidence. We do this in a learner centred way with our students choosing their own topics, poems and books. It is wonderful to hear of their success and then share their passions at Young Speaker of the Year.

Harriet Lang from Moreton Hall, said:

I’ve loved Shakespeare since I was 11 years old and I’m hoping to study English at Oxford. The ACLA (Advanced Certificate in Language Arts) allowed me to choose the topic closest to my heart, which gave me the freedom to explore Shakespeare even further. I relished the opportunity.

Matthew Grayson from Wakefield Independent School, focused his talk on his love of food. He said:

Back in May when I did my ESB assessment, the number one place I wanted to visit to experience its food was Copenhagen. This year, my parents took me for my thirteenth birthday so I was able to give an update during my speech at the ceremony.

The Young Speakers of the Year were joined on the day by the winner and runners up of our successful Sixty Second Shakespeare Competition. The national competition, held to celebrate Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary, displayed the talents of pupils from across the country. They joined the Young Speakers in presenting their winning sonnets to family and friends.

ESB is proud to announce its partnership with The Noisy Classroom, a website and training organisation dedicated to supporting speaking and listening across the curriculum.

The director, Debbie Newman, is a qualified English teacher, a former President of the Cambridge Union Society, a world champion debate coach and a former assessor for the English Speaking Board.

She has gathered together a band of associate trainers whose experience includes working at the English-Speaking Union, the National Theatre and the City Lit.

These trainers run workshops for students and CPD events for teachers in debating, public speaking and drama. The organisation works with Linklaters to run debating in Hackney primary schools and with the PiXL club to run a national secondary debate programme called “Up for Debate”. The website is full of free to access videos and resources for the classroom.

Debbie explained the ethos:

The Noisy Classroom is passionate about helping children to become articulate and confident adults.

All of our lives we will be judged based on our ability with the spoken word. Whether it is going for a school, university or job interview, delivering a pitch or a presentation, arguing in court or working in telesales, our speaking powers can help us achieve our goals.

The organisation places particular emphasis on debating; she explained:

Debating is Oracy Plus. That is because as well as teaching the skills of public speaking, it also develops critical thinking. These skills in turn improve essay writing and examination performance.

She added:

That is why The Noisy Classroom is delighted that the English Speaking Board has added debating to its suite of excellent qualifications in oral communication.

English Speaking Board (International) Ltd. ran a teacher-training session for primary and secondary school teachers from Bolton and the surrounding region at Bolton School on Wednesday 3rd February.

This event was designed to give teachers an insight into the way that ESB’s qualifications are mapped to the National Curriculum and demonstrate how they give students vital skills for further education and employment.

Alison Coates, ESB’s Business Development Adviser for Graded Exams led the session. She said:

ESB offers bespoke training and workshops for teachers and students at all levels. We had a fantastic day at Bolton School coaching teachers from the local area. We wanted to create a forum for discussion about the recent change in terminology from Speaking and Listening to Spoken Language and the impact this has had in the classroom.

ESB’s ethos is to allow learners to develop their speaking and listening skills in a supportive environment focusing on personal growth and confidence; the delegates were inspired by the day and will take this approach back to their own classrooms.

ESB’s training resonated with the English Department at Bolton School, Boys Division. They tweeted after the event:

Plenty of food for thought for whole school oracy projects, curricular and extracurricular.