Korean Job Discussion Forums

[captain kirk]

This is messed up, but I'm gonna tell you about it anyway.
So I've got to prep a 13 year old girl for her speech contest. She's short, shy, and has braces. Her speech is about her hamsters. The first draft 'we trashed' because it was dead boring. Too formal, dull, drawn out, bland. It was written by the head Korean teacher. Who said why did you trash my speech? I said it was dead boring, that's why. She said, 'I don't care that you think my speech was boring'. And I said, 'I know you don't'. We're really friendly, really. And this was an amusing exchange for both of us.
So we've got a new speech written by me about the girl's hamsters. That was done in 30 minutes then typed madly out to print on the computer while her Dad waited. I'm telling you this because there's lots of effort involved prepping her, and surrounding this speech contest thing. Her Mom has paid for three one-on-one hours with me, the f-teacher. And for the girl herself, Cherry is her name, this is from 9-10pm. She gets up at 7;30am.
So prep night two, the new speech written, we go over intonation, big voice, how to get a big voice. Go over the speech with a highlighter yellow pen. Don't read flat. I go into why do a speech contest, because it's stupid, right? (she smiles and nods). It's because your mother wants you to have confidence, that's her gift to you, putting you through this speech contest stupidity, right? And how she will own the room. The people want to hear what you have to say, but only, and especially, if you sound excited and like you believe it. And so on. Point is I really felt like I was a teacher here, really into getting her prepped.
Because the head Korean teacher said she has been thru three contests already and didn't make the running. This really bothers her, and her mom. So work on gestures and intonation, etc. After the second of the three prep sessions I tell her my theory about Cherry.
She wipes out because whe wants to punish her mom, and the whole stupid grind over-schooling is.
But I'm gonna change that, we're going to win, I get the feeling.
Well, tonight, and the speech contest is tomorrow at 1pm, she wipes out. It's a Korean teacher's idea (not the head Korean teacher) to have Cherry 'do her speech' before her fellow students, eight girls her age. And the k-teacher wants to see it too, and brings along six older students.
Cherry groans and stands up. She makes painful smiles and leans to the left and the right, like she's feeling self-conscious. This goes on for some time, until she finally starts to recite (she has it memorized). Except she recites in a deadpan, flat-line thrill-less voice. I mean we spent two hours, two classes, on intonation. Using four different colours of highlighters to get that noted. Now she's flat, I'm like WTF!
Then she 'forgets' her lines, and stands there nervously 'smiling' and squirming to the left and right like she has to go to the bathroom. It's torture. Everybody's watching like a firing squad, compared to the victim antics she's acting out.
Which totally confirms my theory from the start. About how she's punishing her Mom and the system of over-schooling by being 'passive aggressive'. Here it's displayed to a T. Everybody in her corner getting the boxer ready, and it's pointless. She just goes into a stall like 'the hell with you guys, everybody, everything, I'm SHY'.
Well, she's still stalled there, and her eyes are getting wet. She's going to cry. Her eyes become red. She's inconsolable, sort of imploded. But she actually just hates everybody. The teachers. That she has to do a speech contest, everything.
She hates the Korean system more than anybody on Dave's.
By stalling it makes me look bad (I didn't prep her well enough), her mother feel bad (she paid for prepping), but the weirdest, most messed up aspect is she takes this out on everybody while going through such drama in the process of deliberately failing, in public, going into the passive stall, and weepy state. But I think the direct hits on target were the priority, not how she feels 'losing'. Seeing people who've helped her lose is 'winning'. It's so creepy, this mental/emotional set-up. But it was right, blaringly visible.
She's 13. Don't people become rather set by that age. The 'formative years'. She has, from my point of view, such an elaborate passive aggressive complex set up that it's almost inpenetrable. It's like a fortress of F-you disguised as meek shyness. I think, I'm sure, her mom wants to disable that so the kid can breathe.
I've been bummed out for the last couple of hours after this happened. What got me out of it was realizing it was all deliberate, and hostile, on her part. All that drama, man, tons. Which means the whole time we were 'prepping' she had no intention of doing anything but failing, which was my 'theory' about her in the first place.
Anyone else prepped for speaking contests? Pretty friggin' interesting

[inkoreaforgood]

I remember speaking contests when I was a kid. I hated them, even though I had to do them for marks. I'd just get up there and do it as fast as I could, then sit down again. Not many people can get up in front of a group of people and give a speech, and do it well.

I teach college now, classes of 50 students, and I get up and do that every day now.

Just because this girl's mother is living vicariously through her daughter doesn't mean the girl has to go along with it. It's not the least bit fun, and the stress it puts on students is tremendous. Great for growing kids NOT!!!!!

[crazylemongirl]

Actually I had a similar situation with the play contest at my school. The korean teacher picked some students and I picked some students for the school play. I tended to go for kids who were extroverted and good at english. She tended to rely on test scores a bit more.

Anyway we ended up with this kid who had excellent english though spoke at a barely audible level in a montone. He gets picked on a lot in class and tends He is 14 so he's a bit older than your student.

I thought that it was a mistake choosing this kid and it was kind of mean to put him in the english drama contest. But for better or worse we were stuck with this kid. We put him in the role of narroator mainly because he wouldn't be on stage a lot.

I did a lot of vocal exercises with him using words like banana and we would widely alternate the pitch of the word so that he could start working on intonation. In terms of voice projecting we did the same thing with volume. The biggest challenge I had with him was getting to open his mouth while speaking. We practiced this over a period of about 3 months and there was a major improvement in his voice.

A few days before the english drama contest the boys perform their play for the principal of my school. Now my principal is the kind of guy that looks like he could queit happily rip open your guts with a knife and eat the contents for lunch. He scares the crap out of me let alone a 14 year old boy. Needless to say the kid chocked and the barely audible monotone returns.

At this point I'm a little worried as we have one rehersal left before the contest. So for the last rehersal I take him into a corrider. I get him to say his lines while walking around talking so that he can say his lines with distractions. I then walk 50 meters down the corrider and ask him to project his voice so that I can hear him. Slowly his voice comes back.

At the contest I'm really worried because this is a large group of teachers and peers. He totally did me proud and totally rose to the occasion. His voice was the clearest its' ever been and his comic timing was great. He asked me what I thought of his performance after we finished and I told him it was perfect. I've never seen a kid beam as much. The play placed second and the boys chose him to accept the certificate on behalf of the group.

Things that I think helped his situation. Were that he was working as part of the group, and the boys realised that if they were going to do well they all needed to do well. So they helped build a We had a long lead in time too so the pressure was taken off.

Anyway I've noticed he's speaking up in class a bit more and I think that this drama contest really gave this kid a chance to shine and I'm so glad that the korean teacher picked him.

[sadsac]

Used too, don't anymore. A total waste of my time and resources. I feel sorry for the kids these days.

[teachingld2004]

This is totally moronic, these speach contests. In my school the kids come in with this drivel in korean, and the supervisor or one of the teachers translates it into English. The kids never write the stuff. The speaches are so not for their levels. I asked one student what this speach was about, and she said she didnt know, her father wrote it. I asked her why this topic was picked, and and she said her school teacher decided on it. When the speack was translated into English, the poor girl could barely read it, and it sounded so strange. THere were all these 10 dollar words,and they were there becuase she said "big words will imptess". She said "The judges dond't understand English very well, but they only want to hear how you speak, if you sound good. So, we can write stuff like, "I ate the pencil green tomatoes and shirts. Life and bananas and important pleasures cloudy".
Is there a purpose? Now, of corse if the students wrote the material themselves I could see the merit, but........

[crazylemongirl]

I think that speech contests do give students a chance to show off their talents. I really enjoyed some of the creativity of my students that come up. In one speech the student refered to himself as 'the samgyopsal killer' which I'm sure was a line that came from a 13 year old and not a teacher.

Likewise my 3rd year students did a pop song contest which was a good way to hear them using english.

I really think that a bit of healthy compeition is fine. Learning how to win and lose graciiously are important life lessons whether they be in english or any other language.

[teachingld2004]

Oh, I think contests are great if the kids write them them themselves. Only I have seen (at all the schools i have worked at) the kids come in with something that some one else has written, and that they just have to memorize.