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Participating students impress judges with high levels of oratory skills.

Three universities were tied for the top spot in the 3^rd annual Wollongong Cup Public Speaking Competition held at the Knowledge Village auditorium and the UOWD auditorium, leading the organizers to average the scores of the winning participants to decide the winners.

American University of Sharjah was declared the overall winner, as they bagged the maximum number of first places in different categories. BITS Dubai and UOWD tied for the second place.

Participants picked up some burning topics of the day to demonstrate their public speaking skills, such as arms trade, unequal distribution of wealth, war, global warming, violence in democracies, consumer exploitation and child militancy.

The UOWD team won in five of the six categories. Maham Wazir won the top spot in Impromptu Speaking, Rumana Sadekar got second position in Public Address, Irshad Azeez won the second prize in Radio news reading, Bushra Yacoub won the third prize in Extemporaneous Speaking and Parvathi Radhakrishnan bagged the third place in Story Telling Original.

Speaking at the award presentation, Dr. Raymi van der Spek, Chief Financial Officer, UOWD, said the Wollongong Cup Public Speaking Competition had grown in scale and importance, as demonstrated by participation of 60 students from 11 universities, with 15 judges offering their services to judge the event.

The judges, drawn from different fields of specialization, shared the view that the participants displayed high standards in public speaking and oratory. They said that as the performances were of such high order, it was difficult to decide the winner.

The 3^rd Wollongong Cup Public Speaking Competition was organized by the UOWD Public Speaking and Debate Club. The event was supported by a host of sponsors, including Dubai Eye 103.8FM, Borders Book Store, Shapes Health Club and Dubai International Academic City. The winners walked away with a host of prizes ranging from cash awards to internships with Dubai Eye.

The following were the top three winners in each category. Public Address: Kartikay Khandelwal of BITS Dubai, Rumana Sadekar of UOWD and Samihah Zaman of AUS.Impromptu: Maham Uzair of UOWD, Pashmina Jham of AUS and Aditi Malhotra of MAHE.

Extemporaneous: Shrey Sanger of BITS, Mohammed Ali of MAHE and Bushra Yakoob of UOWD.Radio: Azra of Preston, Irshad Azeez of UOWD and Anchal Agarwal of BITS.Story Telling Traditional: Salma Sidik of AUS, Blassy Bobin of MAHE and Prerit Uppal of BITS.Story Telling Original: Zain Sheikh of AUS, Aakanksha Singh of MAHE and Parvathi Ramakrishna of UOWD.

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About University of Wollongong Dubai

Established in 1993, UOWD was the first Australian university in Dubai to be licensed by the UAE Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research. Located at Knowledge Village, it boasts 2500 students from 80 different nationalities.

It is part of one of Australia's best performing research institutions, University of Wollongong Australia (UOW) which is recognised as one of the top Australian universities for excellence in teaching performance. UOW has been listed in 2007 List of the World's Top 200 Universities of the prestigious Times Higher Education Supplement.

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