The students of Savremena International School, Anđela Despotović, Mina Kovačević, Una Grzunov and Viktor Anđelković represented their school at a rhetoric competition. All of them delivered the orations they wrote themselves, leaving a strong impression on the audience and achieving a noteworthy success.

‘An imagined word is a thought! A spoken word is a speech! An orated word is poetry! A written word is a poem! A merciful word is a prayer! An ennobled word is advice! A compassionate word is consolation! A consecrated word is a blessing! A joyful word is a cry! A word of repentance is a confession! A nice and honest word is an oration!’

These words opened the fourth season of the international rhetoric competition for high school students. The event was organised by the Church parish of Smederevo – The Cathedral Temple of Saint George the Victorious. This year the ‘Slavoslov’, as this event is called, hosted seventy two contestants from five cities and eleven high schools.

The students of Savremena International School, Mina Kovačević i Una Grzunov, qualified for the next round of the competition.

The Students of Savremena Excelled

Our students, Anđela Despotović, Mina Kovačević, Una Grzunov and Viktor Anđelković represented Savremena International School at this competition. With their serious and inspiring rhetoric skills they not only won the affection of the jury but also that of students of other schools.

In spite of being the youngest contestants, they showed their ability to rule the scene and to draw the attention of the audience both with the originality of their orations and their magnificent public performance.

Anđela Despotović was the first one to perform and she spoke about how a man is only free when telling the truth. Mina Kovačević used two interesting stories to speak about the perfect balance in life, while Viktor Anđelković focused on the issue of kindness and its survival in the world. The draw had decided that these three would compete against each other on that evening in Technical School in Smederevo.

Una Grzunov’s time to perform came a week later. Una spoke about the changes taking place globally and reminded the audience that if they supported these changes, they needed to make them happen themselves. Una’s performance was well received and described as the best performance of the evening.

Words of the Students of Savremena Travel Far

Nataša Rašković, Serbian teacher and the organiser of the competition, provided more information about the performance of our students. When we asked her to comment on the performance of our students, she said the following:

‘The stage belonged to the students of Savremena School tonight. Although they are very young, this evening they spoke about very serious issues. They are the authors of their own speeches, which makes me extremely delighted and proud’.

The teacher of Serbian in Savremena International School, Miss Mirjana Vasić Adžić, emphasised that the key to success lies in preparing well for the competition. She is proud of our students for showing maturity, seriousness and willingness to perform with courage although they were aware of the fact that they were among the youngest contestants.

The Next Phase of the Competition

The students gave their best to live up to the challenge and we congratulate them from the bottom of our hearts.

Mina Kovačević and Una Grzunov qualified for the quarter-finals. We are keeping our fingers crossed for our future orators, and we encourage other contestants to keep fostering their rhetoric skills.

Likewise, we would like to express our gratitude to Father Saša for launching and founding this competition and for kindly inviting us to be part of it, as well as for his warm and heartfelt welcome.

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