Conferencia- C

In addition to French, I am taking Spanish III this year. I want to perfect my grammar and communication skills in what used to be my first language, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to try out for Conferencia. I auditioned in December and was lucky enough to make the team. I was selected to memorize a poem, called La Marioneta de Gabo, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and to do extemporaneous speech in Spanish. This experience was probably one of the best all year! I got a perfect score on both events, and our team won first place in our division. This was the first time that I ever competed in anything like this, involving speaking or performing in front of judges. It really helped me become more confident in speaking Spanish and working under pressure. The teammates and coaches, Señor Avendaño, Srta Haedo, and Sra Zelaya, were a huge help. I met with Srta Haedo on 8 different occasions from January to March to practice my poem (2 hours), and practiced my extemporaneous speaking with my father and Sra Zelaya (2 hours). This doesn't include memorization time, though! I had to spend at least ten minutes each night for a while to memorize the poem and write all of my outlines for the speeches (4 hours). This was definitely one of the best projects I have been involved in during high school! Next year I am going to try to do declamation in Congrès, the French counterpart of the Conferencia competition.