Hey everyone!
Yesterday, I went to the All-Aomori Speech contest with Tandoh-sensei and Saori Fukuda. She is a second year high school student (ni-nense). I was given a shorter time to practice with her and it was only 2 weeks long... I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, but more on that later.
I woke up at 5:00 AM that morning and made myself breakfast. I knew it would be a longer day, so I made myself some eggs and bacon instead of my normal cereal or oatmeal. We left at around 6:00 on a school van and I was very tired still, so I tried to take a nap. The roads from Oma to Mutsu are very curvy, so that was not a good time.
We arrived in Aomori-shi and had to go to a conbini (convenience store) and buy our lunch for later. I don't remember the name of the place, but it was like a community centre or something official that had a nice auditorium in it. The speech contest itself was very long and there were 13 recitations and 25 original speeches. Saori went 12th and I thought she did a good job.
We ended at about 3:30 in the afternoon and the judging took a long time. My student did not get a prize. There were five prizes to be won and she did not place in any of them. I was very upset because I thought she had done a good enough job to at least place in the 4 honorable mentions. At the time, I was very upset and even angry at the judges because I did not think they judged all the students on a fair or consistent basis. The five students who ended up winning did either speech "A" or "D". I do not want to take away from the students who won as the ultimate goal is for the students to learn and appreciate the English language, but I do think that there is some underlying politics that I am not aware of or cannot control at my level of bureaucracy.
We got back to Oma at about 8:00 PM and I was exhausted. Overall, I experienced my first speech contest and know what needs to be done to win. I was a little unprepared with the student because of the short time I was given whilst other people had a longer time. We will win next time!
Yesterday, I went to the All-Aomori Speech contest with Tandoh-sensei and Saori Fukuda. She is a second year high school student (ni-nense). I was given a shorter time to practice with her and it was only 2 weeks long... I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, but more on that later.
I woke up at 5:00 AM that morning and made myself breakfast. I knew it would be a longer day, so I made myself some eggs and bacon instead of my normal cereal or oatmeal. We left at around 6:00 on a school van and I was very tired still, so I tried to take a nap. The roads from Oma to Mutsu are very curvy, so that was not a good time.
We arrived in Aomori-shi and had to go to a conbini (convenience store) and buy our lunch for later. I don't remember the name of the place, but it was like a community centre or something official that had a nice auditorium in it. The speech contest itself was very long and there were 13 recitations and 25 original speeches. Saori went 12th and I thought she did a good job.
We ended at about 3:30 in the afternoon and the judging took a long time. My student did not get a prize. There were five prizes to be won and she did not place in any of them. I was very upset because I thought she had done a good enough job to at least place in the 4 honorable mentions. At the time, I was very upset and even angry at the judges because I did not think they judged all the students on a fair or consistent basis. The five students who ended up winning did either speech "A" or "D". I do not want to take away from the students who won as the ultimate goal is for the students to learn and appreciate the English language, but I do think that there is some underlying politics that I am not aware of or cannot control at my level of bureaucracy.
We got back to Oma at about 8:00 PM and I was exhausted. Overall, I experienced my first speech contest and know what needs to be done to win. I was a little unprepared with the student because of the short time I was given whilst other people had a longer time. We will win next time!
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