[Sarugetchu]

Thank you so, so much for your help!!! I'll make all of those changes now.

I know I said this was an assignment, but we were actually advised to get native Japanese speakers to go through it with us. We're final year so I think they know that we'll have met a lot of Japanese people last year. I think they know we're not fluent, but wanted the speeches to be at sort of speech competition level, sounding natural to a Japanese ear, which I just can't judge on my own.

Are all these rules you mentioned general ones for Japanese speeches? I performed one when I was studying over there but it was horrifyingly simple, and I was instructed to use long form. Any idea what they use in the likes of Speech Competitions?

In response as to why I used 小さな, I had originally written 小さいな when a Japanese friend who read through the first few lines a while back ago told me to make it chisa na. I had assumed it was more formal, or just flowed better in Japanese.

Thanks so much for reading it!!! Please tell me if any parts sounded odd so I can have a go at rewriting them!

Edit: Just checked with my tutor, and it seems we're not expected to do the speech in long form or use some of those other tips as they said it would be too formal, and should instead be more like the form used in Japanese Speech competitions. Thank you very much for your advice though, and it will definitely be handy in the future!