Speech Contest

Some of the latest events that I’ve missed really talking about have been the English Speech Contests for Narashino and the nearby Yachiyo City.

For a solid month, I stayed late after school every day to work one-on-one with my current school’s representatives in the contest. I helped them with pronunciation, eye contact, posture, and gestures. I even made some on the fly edits to some of their speeches to flow more smoothly and give the kids less trouble.

Working with just a few kids for that long, you get really invested. You know how hard these kids worked, how much they improved, and how high their English level is outside of the speech.

That in mind, the actual contest can then be fairly nerve wracking to you as a teacher (if you’re anything like me). A word to the wise, though: your kids’ level and amazingness will not guarantee them a good placing. There are two native English-speaking judges for our contest and one Japanese judge who is fluent in English.

I was really disappointed for two of my first years. They had mastered pronunciation and had really good chemistry, but didn’t place at all. It was frustrating, but almost all of my other kids at least placed — which was a real accomplishment when they were pitted up against seven other schools! The principal from my school and the teachers said really nice things to me about so many placing.

I was lucky to go judge a neighboring city’s English speech contest the next week, so I at least got to experience a little more of the process behind the decisions. The other city was much larger than ours with upwards of 12 JHS. That meant that we had to judge very quickly and it was very difficult to remember exactly how well each student did if a question of placement came up afterward.

It’s really not very fair to the students. With as much work as they put into it, I wish there was time to review the speeches again and have a few hours set aside for actually deciding the winners. The speeches are recorded, so the chance to do something better is in place… but the contest already lasts all day. It isn’t practical to push for it to be even longer…

And I guess that sums up the big events from the past few weeks! I’ll update later to complain about how cold it is and how I really need to go buy winter clothes.