Speech Contest

August 23

So for a while now, I’ve been helping 2 students prepare for the speech contest that went on today. One student, Hitomi, is a second year at my high school. The other student is Ayana who is a first year. The first time I helped Hitomi, I was impressed with how well her English was. She hardly has an accent and already off the bat she was getting the feeling of the speech (it’s a Mother Teresa speech about how materially poor people can be spiritually rich). So my first time helping her out, I wasn’t too sure what to do.
Then I helped Ayana. She was what I thought most of them would be like. She had less experience with speech contests and so got really nervous and the day came nearer. I worked with her more than I did with Hitomi. For her, I created a list of words and word combinations that she had trouble with. The cool thing is that it actually helped her! If she read the list out loud before she read the speech, she’d have less of a hard time.
This week, we tried to prepare them for the contest. So, they had to have it memorized and be able to express the feelings behind the speech. But because I’ve never been in or to a speech contest I wasn’t too sure how to help them. But, I was able to tell them what they should be thinking about at certain parts of the speech so that they can try to feel and express the emotion behind the speech.
And they both did wonderfully! The contest was separated into 3 sections. Hitomi was in the second and Ayana was in the third. After each section, there was a break. And after the first section, both got really nervous about their speech.
In the first section, there was a girl who expressed a lot of emotion. For the most part she had it dead on but in all honesty, I feel that at some points she got a little carried away… And then, during one girl’s recitation (who happens to be from the high school my buddy Mike works at) a cell phone went off! I’m pretty sure everyone was mad at the guy… But the horrible thing is that the ringing distracted the girl and caused her to get lost within her own recitation! She was doing so well and then she started to blank and struggle with her speech. Oh, and as if that weren’t enough, there’s a 3 minutes limit to recite the speech. They give you a thirty second warning and when the time’s up, you hear a bell. Once the 30 second warning popped up, she struggled even more. The prompter on the side had to keep helping her through the last half of the speech. And then her time was up. But, she wanted to finish so she continued on (cudos to her). The poor thing. She was practically in tears as she walked off stage. I wanted to go over to her and give her a hug!
So, after those two performances (among other performances) Hitomi and Ayana became very nervous. But they did it well and under the time limit. Only Ayana needed a little help from the prompter but on her own, she added hand movements into the speech.
After all the students had performed and the judges were making their decisions, I gave them each a box of strawberry pocky. I thought, “Hmm. They’re really nervous about it. I want to get them something…a treat! Chocolate’s always good.” And they were really happy about it. So happy that they gave me something in return too! I got a shrimp onigiri (rice ball) and a banana crepe treat. Hehe^^
In the end, there were 10 finalists (if I remember right). And Hitomi has moved onto the next level! Hurray! Ayana sadly didn’t but being that it was her first speech contest, I think that’s a huge accomplishment on it’s own.
:]