hey all,
A few days ago I was a judge at an English speech contest. The last few weeks, I've been spending a little time tutoring 2 students from my school so that they could compete. I've felt a little bad about it, because my 3rd year teacher kept asking me to stay after school and tutor them, but I always left. You see, school ends between 3:35 and 2:25, depending on whether they have 5 or 6 classes that day. I'm only scheduled until 4:15, so if my students didn't come to me before 4:15, I'd book out of there like a bat out of hell.
After all, I'm not a volunteer worker: I'm only paid to come in from 8:15-4:15, after that, I'm literally working for free. There is no overtime. I know some of my fellow ALTs did in fact choose to volunteer, but when I talked to them, I found out that they like their schools. Some of them even hope to teach at the same school next year, so great is their love.
In any case, like all Japanese events, there is a huge amount of ceremony surrounding the speech contest. I didn't describe all the speakers (and speeches), special guests, and important announcements that were made during my school's sports festival day, but the speech contest was much the same. Maybe go back and re-read my post about the first day at school, and all the bowing, speeches, "Do your best"-ing, etc surrounding the beginning of the school year.
There were about 30 students competing, and only one of them was a boy. His speech wasn't even that good, which made me feel kinda bad for him. Both of my students choked: they hadn't memorized their speeches very well, so they stumbled and paused, a lot and probably went over the 5 minute time limit. They both scored close to last place out of the 30.
Their pronunciation was ok, but my idiot of an English teacher actually insisted that we waste precious practice time working on Ls and Rs. We spent 10 minutes trying to get this poor girl to say "Europe" not "Eulope," and finally got her to do it correctly 3 times in a row, only to have her go back to "Eulope" on the very next time. I told her "Every student is going to make this mistake. We shouldn't bother with it. The judges (all ALTs) know that most Japanese people can't hear the difference between L and R." I wanted to say that even my Japanese English teachers make this mistake, but I don't think they would have appreciated that.
Tonight, Michi and I are heading to a park with a lake in Western Tokyo, and renting a small paddle boat to do the couple thing. I'm also booking a hotel room for us in Yugawara for the weekend after next, so we can relax after a hard day of climbing. Tomorrow, I've organized yet another indoor climbing session at the gym in Tokyo. Next weekend, I might host another one. Not sure yet.
Cheers,
