French student wins English public speaking competition

A 16-year-old has become the first French winner of the English Speaking Union (ESU) international public speaking competition, which started in 1980.

He beat more than a million native and non-native English-speaking students from more than 40 countries around the world, including the UK, the US, Romania and Denmark.

Mickael Naouri’s winning speech was entitled The battle of narratives, which he believes is “the main driver of history”.

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'The man in the arena'

He delivered it in front of a large audience at the Royal Institution in London.

He began the speech with “Once upon a time… Oh, you were expecting a story?” before touching on different perspectives of the war in Ukraine and using quotes from Robert Shiller, Friedrich Nietzsche and others.

“Winning felt unreal. I could not believe it was happening,” Mickael told The Connexion.

“All the other participants were amazing and so friendly," he added.

“There is a Teddy Roosevelt quote I like: ‘The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.’ I felt like the man in the arena, and that is how I like it.”

Congratulations from Mr Macron

Public speaking is a long-term passion. Mickael used to watch the Agincourt speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V with his father, enraptured.

“I will remember that speech until the day I die,” he said.

Since winning the contest in May, he has received a letter of congratulation from President Emmanuel Macron. “That was very special,” he said. “It gave me an incredible feeling of achievement, and it made me feel so grateful to all the people who gave me the opportunity, to the country of France, and to the president.”

Mickael was born and raised in Paris and attends Ecole Jeannine Manuel, an international school. Bilingual from a very early age, he said that he is “American on the inside” but his background is diverse.

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He qualified for the final through a national competition last year at the Assemblée nationale.

He became the first French student to make it to the final six, before winning the whole competition.

“Unlike most other candidates, I applied on my own, not with the help of teachers or parents,” he said. He has previously won a national poetry public-speaking competition.

The ESU is an educational charity founded in 1918, with 50 member countries. The late Queen Elizabeth II was its patron.

You can watch Mickael’s speech here.