[Grammar] need some help

[Heidi]

Dear teachers,
I'm going to take part in a speech competition at school, and here is part of my speech script, would you please give me some advice? Are those words underlined appropriate? need some replacement?

"my name is heidi, my speech topic is 'the day I gave my first English speech'. I will never forget the day of my first English speech contest. I made a lot of preparations for the competition..."

 

[billmcd]

The underlined words look OK to me.

 

[Heidi]

The underlined words look OK to me.

Dear billmcd,
Thank you. Frankly speaking, I don't have much confidence in my script. Please allow me to ask this way, 'would a native speaker write sentences like that?' For example,
1. Is it OK to say 'my speech topic is ...'? or, should I say 'my speech heading is ...'?
2. Which one sounds more natural? (or neither does?)
'I will never forget the day of my first English speech contest' or 'I will never forget the day when I participate in my first English speech contest'
3. 'I participate in an English speech contest/competition', which word is better?
4. 'I made a lot of preparations for the contest/competition', which word is better?

 

[TheParser]

Dear billmcd,
Thank you. Frankly speaking, I don't have much confidence in my script. Please allow me to ask this way, 'would a native speaker write sentences like that?' For example,
1. Is it OK to say 'my speech topic is ...'? or, should I say 'my speech heading is ...'?
2. Which one sounds more natural? (or neither does?)
'I will never forget the day of my first English speech contest' or 'I will never forget the day when I participate in my first English speech contest'
3. 'I participate in an English speech contest/competition', which word is better?
4. 'I made a lot of preparations for the contest/competition', which word is better?

***NOT A TEACHER***

Heidi, good morning.

(1) I think some speech experts would advise dropping "speech." Everyone there knows that you are going to give a speech. Just say, " My topic is...."

(2)"I will always remember the first time that I participated in this kind of competition." Many "experts" advise that you try to be affirmative -- instead of negative.

(3) I have really prepared myself for this occasion/event.

Good luck. Hope you win!

 

[billmcd]

1. "Speech topic" is OK. or "My speech today is..."(speaking) or "My speech that day was..." (writing)
2. Either example sounds OK but I like your first example it sounds better for conversation and the second one if you are writing, for example, an essay about it.
3. First, it should be "participated"; second, "contest" is OK but "competition" is more impressive for me.
4. Again, whether you are speaking or writing I would state, "I prepared myself well for this event" (speaking) or "I spent a great deal of effort preparing for the competition" (writing)

 

[Heidi]

Dear TheParser, billmcd,
I really appreciate all your suggestions and I have made some modifications to my script. I post the whole script here and would like to get more advice. (hope that I'm not too greedy!:lol Thanks in advance!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Good morning, everyone. My name is 梁海寧, and my speech topic is 'the day I gave my first English speech'. (change to 'my speech today is...')
I will never forget the day of my first English speech contest.(change to 'I will always remember the day of my first English speech competition) It was held by ACES English School, and I'm one of the students at ACES. I made a lot of preparations for the competition.(change to 'I spent a great deal of effort preparing for the competition) I asked Kim, my English teacher, to correct the speech script and my pronunciation. I made several invitation cards for my teacher and my best friends at 永安 Elementary School. But unfortunately, I didn't see them there. Maybe they were all busy. It was OK because my father and mother were with me, so I wasn't nervous at all. Not yet.
At first, it wasn't like a contest, it was more like a fun Christmas show. One teacher was wearing funny clothes, introducing the student on the stage in a funny way, you know, it always makes me laugh when foreigners speak Chinese! One student moved his body and waved his hands while he was giving his speech. Another two students were singing, dancing, and suddenly the music stopped! Poor kids, they didn't know what to do next! It wasn't very quiet at the auditorium, either. It was crowded. I belive most of the people were the students' parents, maybe their grandparents, aunts or uncles. I think they were more nervous than their children. Most of the time, I was in another room, talking, running around, laughing and chatting with other boys and girls.
Suddenly, somebody called me. Oh my goodness! It was my turn! I couldn't laugh any more. I was scared, especially when I was standing next to the stage, waiting for my turn. I couldn't remember anything...
Frankly speaking, I don't know how I finished the speech, all I remember is that I rushed from the stage to my mother when I heard the applause from the audience. She gave me a big hug.
Today is the second time I have given a speech in front of so many people. I hope it will be a nice, sweet memory, too. Thank you.

 

[billmcd]

A few minor changes. Congratulations!! You did an excellent job.

Good morning, everyone. My name is 梁海寧, and my speech topic is 'the day I gave my first English speech'. (change to 'my speech today is...')
I will never forget the day of my first English speech contest.(change to 'I will always remember the day of my first English speech competition) It was held by ACES English School, where I am a student. I made a lot of preparations for the competition.(change to 'I spent a great deal of effort preparing for the competition) I asked Kim, my English teacher, to correct the speech script and my pronunciation. I made several invitation cards for my teacher and my best friends at 永安 Elementary School. But unfortunately, I didn't see them there. Maybe they were all busy. It was OK because my father and mother were with me, so I wasn't nervous at all. At least, not to that point.
At first, it wasn't like a contest. It was more like a fun Christmas show. One teacher was wearing funny clothes, introducing each student on the stage in a funny way, you know, it always makes me laugh when foreigners speak Chinese! One student moved his body and waved his hands while he was giving his speech. Two other students were singing and dancing, and suddenly the music stopped! Poor kids, they didn't know what to do next! It wasn't very quiet at the auditorium, either. It was crowded. I believe most of the people were the students' parents, maybe their grandparents, aunts or uncles. I think the parents were more nervous than their children. Most of the time, I was in another room, talking, running around, laughing and chatting with other boys and girls.
Suddenly, somebody called me. Oh my goodness! It was my turn! I couldn't laugh any more. I was scared, especially when I was standing next to the stage, waiting for my turn. I couldn't remember anything...
Frankly speaking, I don't know how I finished the speech, all I remember is that I rushed from the stage to my mother when I heard the applause from the audience. She gave me a big hug.
Today is the second time I will be giving a speech in front of so many people. I hope it will be a nice, sweet memory, too. Thank you.

 

[Heidi]

A few minor changes. Congratulations!! You did an excellent job.
...
Today is the second time I will be giving a speech in front of so many people. I hope it will be a nice, sweet memory, too. Thank you.

Dear billmcd,
Thank you so much for your modification and your time! I really appreciate them!
I think one of the hardest things for me in learning English is about the tense. Sometimes it really makes me confused. For example, at the end of the script, I originally wrote 'today is the second time I have given a speech in front of so many people'. I used 'have given a speech', because I thought the speech will be given in the future, it doesn't happen yet. When I'm coming to the end of the speech, it will have been the second time I have given the speech.
But I'm not sure if I was right, would you please give me some instruction why you used 'will be giving'. Thanks a lot!:lol:

 

[billmcd]

I think I might have misunderstood the scenario and the last sentence in your example is OK. "I have given" is OK if you had just completed the speech. Sorry for my misinterpretation.

 

[Heidi]

Dear billmcd,
I think I didn't state the whole situation very clearly, so you thought you might have misunderstood.
After thinking over, now I don't think my original sentence "today is the second time I have given a speech in front of so many people. I hope it will be a nice, sweet memory, too" makes sense. Let me try to explain. The situation is that I took part in a speech competition last year, say speech #1, and I'm going to take part in another speech competition in April this year, say speech #2. This script in speech #2 is describing what happened in speech #1, so, maybe "today is going to be the second time I have given a speech in front of so many people. I hope it will be a nice, sweet memory, too" makes more sense(?)
I'm eager to see your advice soon. Thanks!

 

[billmcd]

OK (and I think, finally) I think you should say "Today is going to be the second time I will have given a speech......."

Combining "going to be" and "have given" for the same action is mixing tenses.