Random Thoughts on Schools and Speech Contest

I have 6 schools, 2 junior highs (grades 7-9) and 4 elementary schools (1-6).

I started going to my jr high schools about 2 ½ weeks after I arrived in late august. Summer break did not end until September 1st, but many students had club activities and classes during the break. My first teaching task was to assist the speech contest students with their speeches. The speech contest is held every year during the opening week of school. I had several kids from both of my middle schools participating, and each day during the last week of summer break, I went in and worked with them on their speeches. There were three different categories of speeches. Some students chose to do original speeches that they would write themselves with the assistance of a JTE and/or ALT. Other students chose textbook dialogues that they would recite, while all first year students were entered into a skit competition that could be either original or previously written. The main problem I found with the speech competition was that I began working with the students only 1 week before they were scheduled for the competition. This would not have really been an issue, however, the originally written speeches were written in such poor english that I was left trying to help the students revise their speech that they had already spent all summer trying to memorize. This was compounded by the fact that the deadline for sending in the finalized speeches to the contest administrators had already passed. Therefore I could only make changes to the most glaring errors.

Some excerpts:

" I smile. I like smiling. Would you smile with me? Lets smile together to become happy."

"Yes, by now you have all discovered that I am a maniac. Each day I love my favorite characters with passion. I am afraid that I will become a dangerous person."

These were probably the funnier errors, but most were tense related, or just plain word choice related, which left me wondering what exactly my predecessor had been doing all summer....

The speech contest kiddies were really great though! They all had enthusiasm for their speeches, and would come into school early, or sometimes late so that I could help them. The main issue was pronunciation, and intonation, but most kids had their speeches memorized by the time I started helping them.
The speech contest itself was during the first week of school in September. All the students entered in the contest got the day off of school to give their speeches in front of the judges, audience, other teachers and students. The contest took place at Kitakata plaza in a room about the size of a smaller school auditorium. A few other JETs from the area were present, and it was a contest between us too, to see who's kids did the best. The day was quite boring, with many kids reciting the same stupid “limelight” speech. ( I had two girls doing that one...) Other speeches were just plain depressing or weird (one about suicide, and one by my kid about anime obsession). All the ALTs sat together during the speeches, and I felt rude at times when we all would be stifling giggles when a student would make an unfortunate mispronunciation. (robber=lover or clapping=crapping)
My kids didn't end up doing all that well. I was somewhat disappointed, since my best student got psyched out and didn't perform her speech as well as she could have. Some of my other students, I felt were at least as good as the 3rd or honorable mention winners. In the end, I felt it was the content of the speeches, combined with some poor delivery that did my students in. One girl in particular had a very repetitive speech about smiling. (excerpts above! The text was about a page and a half, but could have been summed up in about 4 sentences) She had quite good pronunciation, however, when she delivered it during the contest, she was just bit too intense. She was practically yelling at the audience! (smile dammit!!!)