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Gordon
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 5309
Location: Japan
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 Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| JimDunlop2 wrote: |
| Gordon wrote: |
Now content is one part, delivery is another and then they are on their own. No help is possible here. |
Yes, delivery is one of those "You can lead a horse to water...." type scenarios. I've coached students who were preparing for speech contests AND recitation contests. The one year I was heavily involved with it, I worked with (and personally coached) 9 students. Of these nine, 7 placed in the top three in their respective categories and one of my first place winners went on to win second place in the prefecture-wide competition.
What separated the ones who scored (and placed) with top marks and the two who didn't even place?
1. Dedication. When we had after-school practice, the ones who actually bothered to show up regularly instead of going to their regular club activity or doing other things scored a lot better.
2. Took my advice. The ones who did EXACTLY as I told them. I gave them very specific instructions on posture, eye contact, intonation, expression, pace, and proper pronounciation of certain vowels and consonants. For example, I spent a fair amount of time polishing "l" vs." r" and "v (instead of "boo-ee") and "c" (instead of "she")... My techniques are usually very effective, so MOST of them were able to do these things well after I taught them BUT....
3. The ones who practiced at home what I taught them were able to improve consitently week after week. Those students I was able to polish their delivery more and more and it got better and better. Those kids who didn't practice, I had to re-teach them the same things over and over, thus wasting time when they should have been working on other aspects of their speeches.
I had one student who was in a speech contest, whose speech was written entirely by the JTE. The only thing that made it ANYWHERE near legit was the fact that the speech was BASED on an actual speech the students had written and delivered in Japanese previously. Apparently it was a "translation" of the student's original speech, but the teacher did all the translating. Unfortunately, it was so rife with grammatical and structural errors, that when it was shown to me to correct, it was covered with more red ink than the actual speech itself. (At this point, I hadn't yet been told that I was actually correcting something the JTE had written and not the student -- OOPS!) The next problem was that the JTE was ALSO trying to coach the student, and thought it best to impart his own advice and knowledge which ran contrary to mine. So who does the student listen to? Yup, you guessed it -- the JTE. Needless to say, that student scored one of the lowest marks in the entire competition... Oh well. You can lead a horse to water... right?
In any event, this will be my first time JUDGING such an event rather than coaching students to prepare for it. Even though I've been given guidelines on which aspects I should be judging, I haven't yet devised a rubric for it -- and I hope I can have something concrete before the competition. Judged events, whether it's a beauty or talent competition, or a science fair or figure skating, are inevitably biased and no one likes it when a decision is made on an apparent "whim" of a judge. |
Jim, most likely the breakdown of the different aspects you are judging will already be done for you or is something you will work on together with other judges. Until you hear 3 or 4 speeches, you won't really know how to score them as you have nothing to compare them to. The you can go back and adjust the first few speeches.
Judging is much easier than coaching, takes only one afternoon. |
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JimDunlop2
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Posts: 2286
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 3:23 am Post subject: |
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| Gordon wrote: |
Jim, most likely the breakdown of the different aspects you are judging will already be done for you or is something you will work on together with other judges. Until you hear 3 or 4 speeches, you won't really know how to score them as you have nothing to compare them to. The you can go back and adjust the first few speeches.
Judging is much easier than coaching, takes only one afternoon. |
You're probably right. I DO have something to compare them to -- but I'm not sure if it will be a good measure or not. The contest committee has sent me a VHS videotape of last year's competition so I can view it beforehand. That was rather thoughtful of them, I figure. |
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Big John Stud
Joined: 07 Oct 2004
Posts: 513
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| Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 5:33 am Post subject: Re: speech contest |
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| Sweetsee wrote: |
1. What do you do when a student asks you to help them?
2. Anyone care to see a speech?
Please forgive me for not going first this time, too knackered.
Thanks in advance.
Enjoy,
s |
I usually ask a lot of questions to help the student express him/herself. Open ended questions are better than yes/no questions. |
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bornslippy1981
Joined: 02 Aug 2004
Posts: 271
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| Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:47 am Post subject: |
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I got stuck two weeks ago re-writing a girl�s speech. Had it been my own student, I would�ve coached her, as others have said is best. However, a private student of mine knows the girl�s father from his country club, and the father knows the student speaks English.
So, after the daughter wrote the speech in Japanese, she did a translation on Google, and had her dad e-mail it to my student. The translation was awful, as would be expected. My student made some corrections, and when we had his weekly lesson, we spent a majority of the hour correcting his corrections. I suppose he wanted to know the correct way to say different things, and I felt bad that it was on his dime that I was essentially re-writing the speech for somebody�s daughter that I don�t know.
Last week I found out the girl got runner-up out of about 50 students. I wonder if she feels bad because she didn�t write any of the speech herself, or if she�s hoping her dad will continue to take advantage of my student?
Then again, I�m glad she didn�t win, and was the first loser. Serves her right for not doing the work herself. |
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gaijinalways
Joined: 29 Nov 2005
Posts: 2279
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| Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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Gordan,
At this women's university speech contest, almost all the speeches use OHPS or powerpoint. It's expected, though not necessarily handouts (though I have seen them at other speech contests).
It just depends on where you are. |
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