Today we had an English speech contest and happily, the class I taught got the first prize. Practice makes perfect. The students practiced the speech many times. They were able to give the speech without looking at their script and could express it with a lot of emotion and the right intonation and stresses.

Today we had an English speech contest and happily, the class I instructed (do you mean the class you teach or something else?) got the first prize. Practice makes perfect. The students have practiced the speech many times and they can both give it without looking at their script and express it with full emotions and proper rhythms.