Could You Speak Up?

So a few weeks ago I was freed. Freed from ever having to hear those speeches again.

A month or so ago, the students began preparing for a speech contest they wanted to enter. Though the teacher translated the speeches for them, they had written them themselves. I was in charge of checking and correcting the translations. The first kid's was a pretty good speech. It was about the power of conversation and how to help the Fukushima victims by talking to them.

The other kid, not so much. Her speech was very strange, but at the same time, that made it very entertaining. It started out by being about what defines adults, which apparently is anyone who lies especially if those lies are "filthy". Then it temporarily became a story about her father leaving her before becoming some imperative about being honest. Also apparently "children know everything."

Her speech had plenty of emotion - sarcasm, hyperbole, poetic words - but it turns out teaching kids to speak with emotion is a lot harder than you'd think.

She later told me to be very honest about it. I told her it was kind of weird, to which she said "I knew it!" and mentioned something about writing it in a day.

The boy wanted to practice once or twice a week, but the girl wanted to practice every day. In fact, she would start practicing whenever she saw me. I was glad to see her so enthusiastic and to finally be doing something worthwhile. Even if it meant staying later.

The boy read his speech like MS Sam. But even worse. His pronunciation wasn't terrible, but everything was read with no tone, like a robot. And at first he couldn't pronounce English exclusive sounds like "th" and had difficulty with "l"/"r" and "v". But each week, he was much better.

The girl didn't start out as bad, but didn't make as much improvement. Not to say their speeches didn't turn out pretty well in the end, but progress was slower than I had expected. I knew it would be hard to teach pronunciation. If it were easy, they'd be doing it already. But I tried. It was a lot of repeating the same word over and over again followed by the inevitable "I got it!" and then realizing it is still wrong. When you hear things too long, semantic sedation begins or worse - you lose the ability to hear the differences yourself.

I figured teaching them emotion and using their hands would be easier. The girl's speech, like I said, called for a lot of emotion. But no matter how many times I explained how to make a sentence sarcastic, she'd say it normally. I had even long given up using English in the interest of time, so it wasn't like she didn't understand. Even at the very end, her sarcasm wasn't what it needed to be, but it was better I suppose. She also read her rhetorical questions like real questions, which sounded weird. In fact, she turned a lot of her regular sentences into questions by means of tone.

Teaching them all this pronunciation and tone caused me to learn about such topics. I had never needed to think how to make something sound sarcastic before, I had always just done it, but now I feel like I know what makes it have that distinct sound some people don't pick up on. Pronunciation, too, I researched. So now I know words like alveolar sibilant or voiced dental fricative. And I know that "r" is an approximate while "l" is a lateral approximate. Unfortunately, none of this actually helped.

So, eventually, they actually pretty much memorized their speeches (after reading them 10,000 times, I'm surprised I don't have them memorized, too), and we went to the competition.

I got there early, so I sat in on part of the Junior High School competition. I guess they picked a story to read or something and had to memorize it. There were like 15 of the same "Red Demon and Blue Demon" story. Which got boring quick so I sat outside.

Eventually my team showed up. We found a room we could eat and practice in. Again, I didn't realize that lunch wasn't going to be provided. I don't know why I keep thinking it would be. So I went to go get some.

By the time I got back, they had started practicing, and also my ex girlfriend have snuck into the room with her students. When she ducked out for a bit, I told the Japanese teacher how unlucky we were to have picked the same room. One of the students, upon hearing who she was to me, decided to hunt her down probably as some attempt to learn my type of girl, but was stopped by the teacher.

The people I had been staying with had shown up with their kids and had begun practicing as well.

During our own practice, my students kept forgetting parts of their speeches, which was bad considering the contest started in a few minutes. The girl still didn't understand tone, but it was much better. The boy's hand gestures were ridiculous, but at least he wasn't standing boringly.

The teacher came up with the good plan of practicing on stage. So we went to the stage where someone else had had the same idea. We sent our students up after, and we stood in the back to force them to speak loudly. The girl went first, but kept asking whether to continue or not, the Japanese teacher seemed concerned, too, but I had figured we could go all the way through, so I kept telling her to go on. Until one of the other teachers in the room, a balding, plum foreigner, suddenly turned around and asked if we could share a little more. So I told the student to stop at the end of the paragraph, then the girl from the other school went for a bit, then our second student went for a bit, then that first girl had all the rest of the time to herself, which I found a bit unfair but didn't care enough.

As the students came back to us, the bald one tried talking to my girl student. She had no idea what he was saying to her fortunately. I also noticed him talking to another girl, but thought nothing of it.

So, the contest started finally.

Participant one went up and started to speechify (that's a word now). Her accent was great. Her volume was  great. She was doing well. Until she forgot some half of her speech. She jumped from the first third of her speech down to the second third or so. And she knew it.

Soon she began skipping other parts. Or looping back up into earlier parts of the speech. Her nervousness got to her.

Eventually she actually formed a loop where she kept saying a large sets lines over and over.

She sat down defeated, it was not a good start to the competition.

However, the people to follow her were also incredibly forgetful. Almost all the students skipped lines or needed to have a line given to them. My friend, the other teacher, had begun texting me how this was one of the worst debates he had seen and that the kids aren't normally this forgetful.

My male student was second. He went up, and sure enough, he also needed some help remembering his lines, but he did really well.

Later on, my other student went. She also did pretty well. And this time I remembered to actually record it, although I don't think she nor anyone else cared.

The bald guy had like a whole TV crew and everything. He had a camera on a tripod, and also one that he brought around and changed angles with when his student was presenting.

Hell, they even had jackets!

So, the speeches ended, and there was some time for the students to come and rush back to their teams while they judged or whatever. So the students came back and started telling us how much fun they had, which is awesome. I was super happy to hear they had enjoyed it.

On their way over, the girl had to pass the bald team again. When I saw him trying to talk to her again, I joked to the Japanese teacher he was probably a pervert. When the student reached us, I joked with her too that he was a pervert, and she said she agreed. The teacher told her not to believe what I said, but the student said she actually thought that, which I thought was pretty funny.

The girl that went first was slumped over in her chair, presumably crying, while my friend (apparently from her school) tried very poorly to cheer her up. She was flailing her arms like someone who was pissed at a baby for crying and couldn't figure out how to solve it. I felt bad for the kid.

The girl somehow got onto the topic of boys again and to divert attention to myself I pointed to my friend across the room and offered him, but she said she didn't like his face. I told her she should tell him that since he would certainly know it was my doing, but the teacher tried to stop this plan. But eventually, she too became an ally to the plan. However, I had kept pointing to the guy, so he noticed and began coming over. My student caught him halfway and tried her best to tell him she didn't like his face, but then began pleading that I put her up to it. He of course knew and walked over smug as always and sat and talked with us for a bit.

Eventually the ceremony began. The students had to return to their seats. They decided to start with some speeches or things of advice or whatever. The first speaker was some foreign Kyuushuu college professor who had given presentations to us before. I think he is a bit of a show-off with his Japanese. His advice was all terrible. He complained none of them started with "Good afternoon", said hand gestures don't belong in a speech, and said no one uses "Thanks for listening" in English. Then he translated it all in a show-offy way. The next speaker did the same English then Japanese thing, and the last one just presented in Japanese. It really bothered me because if you can't even use English at an English competition, where can you use it?

So they presented awards backwards, starting from 1st place, but after they had all 10 places gather on stage. So there was zero suspense or interest. The TV crew team were dashing around, getting all kinds of angles. Naturally, their student won. My students didn't place, but it was okay. Now that I think about it, that kind of puts them really close to last place since so few came. Oh well, they had fun.

So we all gathered up and I decided to depart with them, but I had to recover my things from the place I had been staying. So I followed my two friends back to the place and we talked about the contest. Apparently, the bald guy had said something to presenter number one that threw her off, some kind of off-hand compliment, and that he was always a problem. Apparently their school fights dirty and treat their kids poorly when they fail so sometimes contests are rigged to help them win. Or so I was told.

We headed back, and the girl complained more about boys. I wanted to treat them to a restaurant, so I talked the driver into it. I wanted to try a lot of food so I ordered too much, but I had planned to pay for everything. However, the teacher ended up paying for it, and I forgot my money in the car, so I couldn't stop her. During dinner, we talked more, and somehow I ended up becoming the girl's father in her imagination and she wanted me to marry her mother, so now she calls me "Papi" which sounds pretty Italian.

We then split up, and finally I was able to go home and never hear those damn speeches again.

Except they converted part of the speeches into catch phrases. >.<