Comp: My Favorite School Event

My Favorite School Event

Middle schools offer students extracurricular English events to stimulate their interest in learning English as a Foreign Language. Some of these events are wonderful but some are boring; students have their own preferences. My favorite event is the English Chorus Contest. I was a participant in last year’s event. What fun it was!

The English Chorus Contest is my favorite because it involves a lot of teamwork. First, we need to choose the song. It is important because to choose carefully as some words in the song may be hard to pronounce. Some students who cannot speak English well will choose a song with few and simple lyrics. Other students will be more daring. There has to be some consensus. 

 After the song has been chosen, everyone should learn how to sing it and memorize the lyrics. We listen to the song played many times to get the rhythm and intonation right. Sometimes we will work on harmony. All this takes time but the teamwork is pleasurable.

Choreography is a criterion for the judge to choose a winner by, so some student groups need to think of body language, gestures, and facial expressions to ring out the best in the song. The actions that fit the song are then learned by the entire troupe. These added notions make our performance better. When we finish all the preparation, we start to practice. We sing the song practicing ten times a day!

On the day of the contest, we were all very nervous; we were the first chorus to perform. Although we had practiced endlessly, we couldn’t calm down. We were so tense that we got dry-mouth and had to drink liters of water. When it was time to go on, we walked onto the stage, our hearts beating fast. I prayed we would not make any mistakes, but then it happened; I screwed the song up! It was disgraceful.

When we finished the song and walked off the stage, we sat on our chairs and watched other troupes perform. After the performances were complete, the judges revealed their decisions: it was not us that won; we came in seventh place, but that was okay with us; we did our best.

My favorite school event is the English Song Contest, despite the outcome. The camaraderie of singing with my classmates is priceless. Whatever the result, even if is not good enough to win, I still feel happy.