Korean Job Discussion Forums

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Wondering if anyone could suggest some topics for students applying to the national speech contest. In particular I'm thinking of topics for a few first-grade high school girls with a decent, but not fluent, command of Engish.

Anyone have experience in preparing students for this?

CdnEducator · Joined: 23 Mar 2005

Here are some speech topics I've done in the past with high school students: 1) What I love about my town, 2) What I want to change about the world, 3) An influential person in Korean history.

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Freezer Burn · Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Location: Busan

Korean superstitions *sp* its interesting to get them talking about their culture and beliefs, its a laugh....

JacktheCat · Joined: 08 May 2004

What the judges of those contests are looking are speeches that extole the virtues/superiority of Korea, it's people, and it's history.

Back in my hackwon monkey days I helped a middle school student prepare a speech on why Korea will become the Hub of Asia for an Incheon speech contest. Totally BS all the way, but she won #1 place.

BigBlackEquus · Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 7:57 pm Post subject:

How about something like, "The Expansion of Gay Freedom in Korea."

CdnEducator · Joined: 23 Mar 2005

For the O.P.- my high school students did speeches as a class assignment rather than for a public speech contest. What I found was that some students prepared well but were very soft-spoken and kept their heads down during the delivery of the speech.
I had spoken to them about eye contact, using a "big voice", etc, but it would take a lot of time and coaching to get them oriented to how to give speeches. Some students delivered their speeches well, head up, clear voice, and eye contact.
I felt it was a good endeavor as it gave each student a chance to speak about something important to them, and it gave them individual accountability.
Good luck with your speech project.

crazylemongirl · Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Location: almost there...

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Thanks for the replies. CLG, good point - I'll be sure to try to find out who's judging it. I believe it's at EWHA in Seoul. One of the students for whom I'm most hopeful has never even been to Seoul (ironically her father is a labourer who helped work on the KTX) so I'm really hoping she gets selected. The being nice to foreigners topic might be fun. Or perhaps 'asking foreigners stupid questions' would work.

BBE, might be a fun topic ... 'Gay freedom is alive and well at our school - we get into couples, walk around holding hands or with our arms around each other's waists, are always slapping each other's asses and have our hands all over each other, sleep with each other in the dorm, and no one bats an eye'...

JTC, if the judges are Korean, I'll be sure to go that route.

DRAMA OVERKILL · Joined: 12 Apr 2005

Have helped several students prepare for speech contests over the years... But, my input for suggested topics was always ignored... My director always insisted on the "reunification of the Koreas" speech... Very unoriginal... Howver, patriotic themed speeches usually do appeal to the judges...

A couple of years ago, students at my school did a speech/play - "The witch who tried to destroy the World Cup" (or something along those lines)... Bet you can't guess which nation destroyed that awful witch and left the rest of the world in awe...

All partaking nations in unison: "You Koreans keep making the world a better place!!! Yaaay!!!

The Korean witch fighters: "Yeah... Don't mention it..."

Hater Depot · Joined: 29 Mar 2005

Doesn't matter where you are, patriotism is the way to win school speech / essay contests.

bosintang · Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 10:18 am Post subject:

Speech contests are up their with the stupidest things in existence in the Korean EFL world.. They have their teachers and parents write up a script and they spend hours memorising it with all the passion of a Turing machine. What a waste of time.

But yeah, back to the topic..stick to the cliches...use lots of slogans catch phrases, and big words, even if they don't make any sense at all.

Yu_Bum_suk · Joined: 25 Dec 2004

EFLtrainer · Joined: 04 May 2005

crazylemongirl · Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Location: almost there...

The last contest my students did consisted of an interview at the end of the class where the native speakers asked them a question or two about the play. The students were not given the questions in advance and had to answer them right then and there.

You could prep students for it by having practice question and answer sessions but there is no way you can memorize an answer to it without getting caught out.Good way to weed out the kids who have just memorized something and the kids who had a grasp of the content they were spouting out.