English Speech Competition

Woah, now here's a bit of fun for ya!

 

A group of students - I think one from each year 3 class plus one exceptionally bright second year student have been practicing English speeches for a National Speech Contest that will be happening next week. Two of the students are reciting speeches that they have been given. The other two students have their own original speeches they have written.

 

These students are expected to recite these speeches in the contest with perfect pronounciation in English and memorised. They don't seem to know what each sentence means and memorise by familarity of constant recitation and practice. They also memorise actions to go with different parts of their speech - gestures to express the words and entertain. At the competition, they are not aloud to have microphones; therefore practice in voice projection (yelling) also seems to be important.

 

Who, you may ask, helps them with this little but mammoth task for Junior High School Students. Well, JTE's (Japanese Teachers for English) and ALTS (Assistant Language Teachers) - namely me. So for the past three weeks, I have been going to school to listen to these four speeches over and over again correcting any pronounciation problems, supporting the memorisation and helping define what gestures to use. I know the speeches myself off by heart and even have special phrases etched into my brain that echoes through the night well after practice - phrases that the students find particularly difficult. For example:

 

"The day was bright with a slight breeze" simple enough? aha, but your most probably a native English speaker.

Japanese Junior High School Student: "Za day was balight wif a salight bleeze"

Me: "The"

Student: "Za"

Me: "No, The"

Student: "The"

Me: "Good! Bright"

Student: "Blight"

Me: "No, Bright"

Student: "Blight?"

Me: "No, um.. Bri, Bri, Bright"

Student: "Bri, Bri, Blight"

Me: "hmm"

~~So on, and so forth until we get each word sounding right~~

Me: "Okay! lets put it together: The day was bright with a slight breeze"

Student: "Za day was balight wif a salight bleeze"

Me: "oh man"

Student with a puzzled look on their face.

And of course, this is only one of the many sentences. The students practice very hard and they have improved so much - some of them fully succeeding in sounding berry Engalish lol. But the joy doesn't stop there - then comes the gestures. Because the memorisation isn't exactly focused on understanding the speech, rather knowing which words come after which words, the students don't quite understand the complexities of connecting the somewhat interesting gestures that they want to do or have been asked to do with timing. So the gestures for the sentences; "I listened to the music" or "we all danced to the band" are not exactly well timed for speaking the verbs. For example; Standing completely still; "I listened to the music"; then hand to ear, hand down, completely still, continuation of speech. THAT has been hard to break!! Mind you, my Nihongo is crap, so I have to go over the speech myself with gestures to show them how I think it should be timed; and we all know how much of a bumbling idiot I can be, so not the best role model!

 

THEN comes the voice projection practice! I'll leave that up to your imagination to think about what that's like coupled with the other fantastic elements of English Speech Contest!

 

In saying all this, it is rather fun and I've gotten to know these bright students well before school has returned for semester two. They have worked so hard on their speeches and presentation and tomorrow they are going to show off in assembly just how well they are. What's amusing is that I will also be doing a speech - in Japanese. So if I was to take a bet, I'd say the school will be laughing more so at me than them!

 

The contest is on September 4th, so we still have a few practices up our sleeve to create perfection... and miracles do exist.

I think, that this is a link to more information on this contest: http://www.jnsafund.org/en/ although skeptical on whether it is the same competition or if this is an old link.

 

And... wish me luck for my own speech tomorrow!!