This year's Spoken English competition at Tavistock's Mount House School produced some outstanding performances.
The competition helps to develop the children's presentation skills, and to encourage them to perform rather than just to read their piece, which can be taken from published works, or written by the children themselves.
This year's adjudicator was Simon Eliot, headmaster of Sherborne School.
Winner of the poetry category for forms 1 and 2 was George Andrews who read 'Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll with impressive expression and clarity. Izella Oxenham won the Poetry award for 3rd and 4th formers, with a performance of 'The Man Who Was Away' by A B 'Banjo' Paterson that drew high praise from the adjudicator.
Oscar Mustard also received generous praise for his recital of 'Timothy Winters' by Charles Causley, which won the 5th and 6th form poetry category.
Cecily Jerboas, winner of the 5th and 6th form prose award was praised for the control and vocal variations that made her performance of a passage from Gerald Durrell's 'My family and other Animals' so entertaining.
The evening was rounded off by two special performances by Sasha Lopes and Georgina Newman – from Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Witches' by Roald Dahl.