I hate speech contest season. Not just because I have to try (with inevitable failure) to improve kids' pronunciation ("Er. Er. Er. No, not 'ah'. Er!"), but because the speeches themselves are unnatural and filled with mistakes. We are teaching kids to memorize, by heart, incorrect English. I complain to the English teachers. They say, oh, we'll tell them. No one ever gets told. The speeches have been the same for three years, only they added in some new mistakes. I would say, "Let native speakers create the speeches," but lets face it, I cannot agree with other NESs during a simple eikaiwa about proper use. In fact, I think a NES I know was involved last year, because as I was complaining about the mistake-riddled MLK speech, he proclaimed, "There are NO mistakes in there!"
I say replace these artificial speeches with speeches people have actually given. Instead of talking about Martin Luther King Jr., give his "I have a dream" speech.
I was kicking around my problems with the speech contest system as a ridiculously corrupt institution a while back on my blog. (This post, just in case. Sorry - that's kind of tacky. Feel free to nuke the link.)
ReplyDeleteI think that the idea you posed though matches what they already do in the recitation contests. They read a pre-written text in front of others. (They're equally horrible, though.) Sigh. Let's just hope that this season passes soon.
OMGosh, totally deleting your comment!
ReplyDeleteNo, but really... With my plan they are at least saying things that people would say in real life, albeit in a speech format, which is a bit more grandiose that normal speech.
We should have scenes from plays too! But not movies... "You talkin' to me?"
Man that sounds really frustrating... and futile. shikataganai? I've never been involved in the education system here, but I have heard the horror stories!
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