The 11 year-old, Year 5 student from Deniliquin North Public School competed at the State Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition Year 5 and 6 section state final last Friday at the NSW Teachers Federation Conference Centre in Sydney.
After successfully progressing through the local and regional stages of competition at Howlong and Young respectively, Lotus reached the finals competing against 10 others from across NSW, including several a year older and in the year above.
In the competition, speakers presented a prepared speech on one of the topics given and gave an impromptu speech with only five minutes to prepare.
In the final, the topic Lotus chose for her prepared speech was ‘Names matter’ and the topic for the impromptu speech on the day was ‘It’s a mystery’.
“Three others also selected the same topic as me and spoke about how their name is multicultural.
“My name’s Lotus, which has nothing to do with multiculturalism, so I spoke about place names. Names show a part of history which is important, and that’s what I thought the topic was about.”
“Then the impromptu topic was It’s a mystery, and I talked about homelessness and couch-surfing.”
Lotus is only fairly new to public speaking and was motivated by her older sister and a teacher at Deni North Public School.
“My sister Frida started debating in Year 5 (she’s in Year 7 and is 13 now) and in Year 6 she also started public speaking. When I was in Year 4 I would watch her and realised it was something I wanted to do.
“Mrs Megan Hunter was very helpful in getting me into public speaking. I also do TOM (Tournament of Minds) with her.”
Lotus said she enjoys public speaking and wants to continue with it.
“I like telling people what I know and giving my opinion on things. I really like public speaking and I like English.
“In the future there is a long list of jobs I want to do; my sister has a list of about 50.
“I particularly want to do something where I can teach people, so they learn and do the right things.
“I’ve been inspired from my sister and parents that have helped me a lot.”
Lotus does not get stage fright, saying “I’m good at blocking everyone and everything else out”.
Having competed since August, it has been a “long journey” with a lot of practice involved.
For her efforts, Lotus earned a “giant” perpetual trophy that will be sent to the school for this year, as well a smaller trophy she gets to keep.
Lotus hopes to participate in the competition again next year.
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