With my passion for badminton and my environment's negetive niews towards the sport, I decided to do my grade 12 speech on badminton. Its my final year in highschool and i wanted to leave an impression. A lot of the information is from this site. I understand that the history of badminton is VERY abbreviated and i tweaked some facts but nothing too major. I just took out the words "speed at impact" ^_^. Should I just take out the history and cram in other stuff? I think history will be a little boring. Anything that you guys feel I should add? Remove? Fix? Lets show the world the strength of badminton! (by the way the speech has to be 3 minutes). Badminton What sport requires strength, endurance, wit as well as mental capabilities? None other than the sport of badminton. I’m sure that you’ve all heard of this great sport and perhaps you’ve even enjoyed it at one point in your lifetime. Unfortunately, most people don’t even consider badminton a sport and the few who do, see it as a “sissy sport”. I am here to shatter this view and to prove that badminton is as challenging as your North American Macho sports like football, soccer and tennis. It all began around 2000 years ago when a small child was gifted with a paddle and a ball with lots of strings attached to it. The child was to try to keep the ball up for as long as he could. This game was the origin of badminton called shuttlecock and battledore. By the end of World War I, a brilliant British soldier in India created a net for this game and two people co-operated to keep the shuttle up for as long as possible. However, they soon realized that it was more fun to keep the shuttle away from each other and thus the sport badminton was formed. Badminton gained so much popularity at that time that it challenged soccer as a mass sport. Badminton’s popularity continues today as it is hailed as the second most popular sport in the world. Lets take a country where badminton is least popular – America. A 1993 study revealed that more than 1.2 million Americans play badminton at least 25 times a year, 760,000 Americans call badminton their favorite sport, and more than 11.2 million Americans played the sport at least once during the year. Internationally, more than 1.1 billion people watched the 1992 Olympic badminton competition on television. Despite its popularity, badminton is also one of the most underrated sports in history. I’ve had a shameful experience when someone laughed at me for saying “I play badminton as a major sport”. I will dispel this belief momentarily. Badminton is the world’s fastest racket sport. Yes it is nearly twice as fast as tennis and almost 1.5 times faster than squash. The fastest recorded speed of a shuttlecock is 332 km/h or 206 miles/h compared to the fastest tennis serve 113 miles/hour. To compare badminton and tennis even further, lets take as an example the 1985 All England Tennis Championship and the World Badminton Championships. The tennis match lasted 3 hours and 18 minutes whereas the badminton match lasted 1 hour and 16 minutes. During this time, 1004 tennis shots were made, compared to the 1972 badminton shots. Finally, the distance covered during the match was 2 miles for tennis and 4 miles for badminton. Note that badminton players competed for less than half the time, yet ran twice as far and hit nearly twice as many shots. Notwithstanding its 2000 year history, its popularity and even statistics of it being arguably the most demanding racket sport in the world, badminton players suffer everyday from the misunderstanding of the public. I was shocked and angered that badminton was listed under backyard sports on E-bay and took it as my personal mission to redeem the great name of badminton. Lets just ask ourselves this question: How many football players, rugby players, tennis players or even soccer players can even react to a shuttlecock coming toward you at a speed of 332 km/h?
Nothing more to add! It is already impressive enough, I must say for a 3 minutes speech. I like the idea of throwing questions at the audience that made them sit up and ponder. I learnt some stuff I was ignorant about though I have been playing for nearly 30 years already. Shame on me! Thanks for sharing. Good stuff.
the information is really good, dont need to change anything there. the thing is that when i was reading the speech, i was thinking to myself that this isnt really gr.12 material...you writing level should be much higher than this just my opinion
Pretty good start. However, 'cause I'm a perfectionist, I think I would rather prefer to nitpick on it, would that be ok with you? I'll copy it, make my corrections and repost. So far, I note that you have the required 5 paragraphs down (good job), some nice attention-getters, solid statistics and facts to back your argument up, and it's not too bad so far. So the parts I'm going to correct are: 1) Grammar- A few mistakes. The difference between no mistakes and a few can decide between an A- or B+, so I'm going to get that. 2) Simplifying certain thoughts- The attention span of audiences tend to be short, and it's great to add humor and quotes, so for example, your last sentence: "How many football players, rugby players, tennis players or even soccer players..." can simply be shortened to: "How many people", or maybe "How many athletes", or even perhaps "How many human beings" or "how many world-class athletes". By listing those examples of sports (football, rugby, etc.), you make it start to become slightly repetitive. Before you start saying that it's "good enough," LET me say something: It is good enough. I'm just trying to get you the A+ if possible. Note: I said "if possible" because I don't know if your teacher is biased towards or against you.
madman and jgao, you guys flattered me too mcuh. I'm glad I unveiled a new part of our cult. hiroisuke, thank you so much for looking deeply into it. I must agree, I was wondering if people would doze off in certain sections such as the stats and history. I would be grateful to hear any suggestions. I would like to keep the last part the way it is because it compares badminton to the macho North American Sports that I promised to do in my intro.
I edited it, and here's what I've written: What sport requires strength, endurance, and wit as well as mental capabilities? None other than the sport of badminton. I’m sure that you have all heard of this great sport and perhaps you have even enjoyed it at one point in your lifetime. Unfortunately, most people do not even consider badminton a sport, and the few who do, see it as a “sissy sport”. I am here to shatter this view and to prove that badminton is as challenging as your North American Macho sports, namely football, soccer and tennis. It all began approximately 2000 years ago when a small child was gifted with a paddle and a ball with strings attached to it. The child was to try to keep the ball up for as long as he could. This game was the origin of badminton called shuttlecock and battledore. By the end of World War I, a brilliant British soldier in India created a net for this game, and two people cooperated to keep the shuttle up for as long as possible. However, they soon realized that it was more fun to keep the shuttle away from each other, and thus the sport we now call badminton was formed. Badminton gained so much popularity at that time that it challenged soccer as a mass sport. Badminton’s popularity continues today as it is hailed as the second-most popular sport in the world. Let’s take a country where badminton is least popular – America. A 1993 study revealed that more than 1.2 million Americans play badminton at least 25 times a year, 760,000 Americans call badminton their favorite sport, and more than 11.2 million Americans played the sport at least once during the year. Internationally, more than 1.1 billion people watched the 1992 Olympic badminton competition on television. Despite its popularity, badminton is also one of the most underrated sports in history. I’ve had a shameful experience when someone laughed at me for saying “I play badminton as a major sport”. I will dispel this belief permanently for all of you. Badminton is the world’s fastest racket sport. Yes, it is nearly twice as fast as tennis and almost 1.5 times faster than squash. The fastest recorded speed of a shuttlecock is 332 km/h or 206 miles/h compared to the fastest tennis serve, which is 115 miles/hour. To compare badminton and tennis even further, let us take as an example the 1985 All England Tennis Championship and the World Badminton Championships. The tennis match lasted 3 hours and 18 minutes, whereas the badminton match lasted 1 hour and 16 minutes. Yet, though the badminton match took place over a shorter time as compared to the tennis one, during these matches, 1,004 shots were made in the tennis match, compared to the 1,972 shots in the badminton match. Finally, the distance covered during the match was 2 miles for the tennis match and 4 miles for the badminton one. Note that badminton players competed for less than half the time, yet ran twice as far and hit nearly twice as many shots. Notwithstanding its 2000 year history, its popularity and even the statistics of it being arguably the most demanding racket sport in the world, badminton players suffer everyday from the misunderstanding of the public. I was shocked and angered that badminton was listed under backyard sports on E-bay and took it as my personal mission to redeem the great name of badminton. Let us just ask ourselves this question: How many professional athletes can even REACT to a shuttlecock coming towards them at a speed of 332 km/h? The stuff highlighted in red are the changes I made. You don't have to use what I wrote, but it's just what I might use if I were in your position. Oh, and may I suggest you add some quotes? Makes it authentic. Good luck!
wow you are very good at grammar. Thanks, I fixed most of what you listed except a few that sounded too formal. Thank you so much.
What about that international badminton players can burn upwards of 1000 calories an hour. Compare that to any other sport to help prove ur point.
hmm, that is an interesting suggestion. I will look for how much tennis players burn in an hour and see if I can add it in somewhere. I just realized that my speech is more towards 4 minutes long if I emphasize everything. I think I'm going to cut down on the history with something like this. Badminton evolved over a course of 2000 years until it became the sport familiar to us today. At this time, badminton was so popular that it challenged soccer as a mass sport. Its popularity continues today...
As suggested by some, I would start off by asking a witty question to catch your audience's attention like: My friends, can you name a bird that can fly at 332 km/h or 206 miles/h? (Then pause for an answer or answers from them.) Well there is one special bird that can do that and it is called 'Badminton'! I'm sure you must have heard of this bird when you play with it in your garden, in the backyard or anywhere else in the open. Yes it is pretty enjoyable and you laugh at how your friend missed hitting the bird or when the wind totally confused its flight. But do you know that Badminton is also played at the Olympics, at the most competitive level, world class, in a totally different environment with all the glamour and excitement? (Then you could touch a little bit about badminton history and the rest of your story. But your story on the paddle with a ball may not be the first??? Do you also know that in China they used their legs to kick small device with feathers?) Hope this is of some help.
That's the whole idea. Let them guess what sort of bird. A bird that is "shuttled by a cork (or should it be a male bird - a cock?)".
It's quite nice speech. Manduki, you've amazed me by the material you prepared. It doesn't seem you are a grade 12. HAve enjoy your speaking time ... :>
Great idea to use your speech in this way You should beware, however, that you are compromising your integrity by over-selling your argument. Some of your claims are simply false, and you might well be exposed for that by (say) a tennis fan in the audience. In particular, the fastest tennis serve is not 115 mph, but 153 mph (Andy Roddick). Your claim that badminton is the second most popular sport worldwide lacks evidence, and I believe it is probably false (the same claim was removed from the Wikipedia article for the same reason). Dressing up the claim with evasive phrasing such as "badminton is hailed as the second most popular..." does not help. I don't want to discourage you, but it would be better to let the truth about badminton speak for itself. Factually incorrect or dubious statements undermine your otherwise strong position. On a general note, this is a very common cause for failure in writing. Writers, even professional ones (like me), are prone to over-writing because they are not confident of their material's quality. Writers should beware whenever they feel the urge to cover up their anxiety with bombast: the result is insincere writing.
Eh. We made a mistake. It was 153, not 115. Sorry 'bout that. I knew there was a five somewhere, just forgot where to put it. It's not the second-most popular? It's losing to soccer/football and what else? Basketball? It should be AT LEAST the second-most popular.
This is a huge assertion, and therefore needs compelling evidence if you are to make it. Otherwise intelligent listeners will instantly distrust you. Just because you've heard someone say this on some website doesn't make it true. The enthusiasm of sports players often leads them to accept such claims without any evidence; everyone wants to think that his sport is special. Badminton is undoubtedly a very popular sport worldwide, but so are many others. It's hard to find any reliable statistics, although football generally seems to be recognised as the most popular sport (especially when you use the term "football" in a broad sense). The lack of information is good cause for scepticism; the best information I could find in a quick Google search gives me this: http://www.johann-sandra.com/popular.htm ....but the data is clearly dubious, as the authors explain. It's very hard to estimate total participation in a sport. The best practical measure is probably total number of affiliated members, which should be easy. Yet this measure is strongly biased, because some sports boast an extremely large number of unaffiliated players, especially in the less developed world. Since badminton probably has a high percentage of affiliated/registered players (due to the club system and the need for courts), you would probably be better finding the registered number of players. This in itself should be impressive enough.
@Loh- that is a very creative way to start the speech. A master with words ^_^. I think I'm going to include that in my intro as the attention grabber. thanks a lot for that suggestion. @hiroisuke - no, its 3-3.5 mins T.T Too much to say and too little time. I did a run through today and it was 3.5 so I may have to cut down a little. @ ants - I take no credit for this article. Its basically a summary and organisation of what others posted on this forum and worldbadminton.com @Gollum - I did not intend to lower the fastest tennis serve. I guess wikipedia messed up on that as well. Thanks for pointing that out. Furthermore, I thought I saw and article somewhere listing the sports. Soccer was number one, badminton was number 2 and i think basketball was 8th place. I'll do more research and edit it out if necessary. I checked out your site and it kind of surprised me. I would assume soccer is the most popular sport in the world and volleyball to be wayyy down there. I'll edit it out to "its popularity continues today as over 200 million people participate worldwide in the sport regularly". thank you for all your comments. I'll edit it and upload it tonight
If you are at 3.5 minutes, I'd recommend leaving it at that. Most people get stage jitters and may speak faster when actually presenting than when they're rehearsing. (I know I do )
Not in "my" badminton article they didn't First, it's not my site. Second, I think you are right about soccer. Volleyball claiming to have nearly 1 billion players worldwide is rather far fetched. The article authors come to the same conclusion. My point really is that that article was the best I could find, and it's not very good at all
