All-Saitama Speech Contest

Last Tuesday, my regional speech contest student, her parents, one of our school’s English teachers, and myself headed to the city of Honjo to participate in the All-Saitama (prefectural-level) speech contest. It was my first experience at a speech contest of this level, and I was really interested to hear students from all over the prefecture. I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I learn so much about Japanese students at speech contests. They can talk about stuff that I never hear them talk about otherwise, because spontaneously talking about such involved topics in English is pretty much impossible for 99% of junior high school students (as you can well imagine). With time, assistance and lots of practice, they can spin a more detailed, more complicated story…in English…about things that concern or interest them. And I finally get a chance at insight into the depths of the Japanese junior high school student psyche.

Anyway….! I had no idea what to expect from students at this level of contest. One of the English teachers at my school had mentioned that working on pronunciation prior to this particular contest was going to be the biggest challenge, because at this contest, we would be up against students who come from private junior high schools…enough said!

So, we arrived, and had to stand outside the community conference hall where the contest was being held because the doors would not be opened until 9am, exactly the time when sign-in was to begin. Definitely in Japan! As soon as the doors were opened, even though it looked like there was protocol for who was supposed to go in first, I burst through and made a beeline for the first toilet sign I saw, because I’d had WAY too many liquids before starting the 45-minute car journey to Honjo, and had had to stand around outside in the chilly morning air for 15 minutes before having access to a bathroom.

Funny thing was, this contest didn’t really seem that different than the regional contest. Lots of students I’ve never seen before wandering around in school uniforms looking nervous, lots of serious-looking people in suits and dress clothes who could have been parents, teachers, judges or dignitaries…it was difficult to tell, and lots of non-Japanese people like myself milling about looking completely out of place. The only difference this time was that only one of these faces was familiar…the ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) I know from a nearby village was in attendance, as his student had received 2^nd place at our regional contest. For the most part, seeing all those new ALT faces simply served as a reminder of just how many foreign Assistant English Teachers there were around, and just how few of them I really ever encounter.

For the opening ceremony (there is ALWAYS an opening and closing ceremony to EVERY event in Japan and they are ALWAYS the same), all 46 1^st and 2^nd place regional speech contest winners, their ALTs, English teachers and parents were all seated in a medium-sized concert hall. After speeches by an innumerous number of people, including someone from the local Pepsi corporation (who were apparently one of 3 sponsors for the event, and gave out free half-sized bottles of tea to everyone during the lunch break), they divided the students into 2 groups for the “semi-final” of the prefectural speech contest. One group stayed in the concert hall, and the other group was crammed into a room about 1/10^th the size on the 3^rd floor. Naturally the latter was our group. The contest suddenly went from seeming quite professional to having the appearances of being one of my grad school classes….except MUCH more crowded.

There was a podium in the middle at the front of the room, under a banner that said, IN JAPANESE, 61^st Annual All-Saitama English Speech Contest. The 2 facilitators/rule-readers/time-keepers sat in the right-side front corner of the room. The 23 students sat at the tables towards the front of the room, just behind the 4 judges, and the rest of us crowded into the tables at the back of the room and the chairs along the sides and very back of the room. There was a seat off to the right side of the room, in front of the facilitators where the “at-bat” student was to sit. Of course, because this student didn’t vacate the seat until they were to take the podium to give their speech, there were constantly students walking across the middle of the room to take their place in this seat during the part of each speech. I have to hand it to the kids…none of them got flustered or distracted by this consistent movement!

The first 3 students gave their speeches and then there was a break for the judges to confer. This happens at every speech contest. I can only assume that they do it so the judges can decide how they are going to award points and judge each speech based on what they’ve seen so far. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing for the students who go first. My student was the 2^nd speaker this time.

After the 13^th speaker, another break. After the 23^rd speaker, everyone dispersed for lunch, although at first they didn’t tell us what time we had to be back to find out whether or not our students were chosen for the top 4 of their section, which would mean they would move on to the final “speak-off” to be held just after lunch. Finally someone mentioned that the results would be posted by 1:30pm. The morning speeches didn’t finish until 1pm. I thought that was interesting…3.5 hours of opening ceremony and speeches and 30 minutes for lunch.

Anyway, the results were posted in the lobby roughly when they said they would be….of course the names were posted in kanji (even though, once again, this was an English-related contest), so I couldn’t figure out right away whether or not my student had made it or not, even though she was with me while we were looking at the board and I was asking her if her name was posted. I think she was a little distracted by all the hubbub. Finally I was able to get her to shake her head at me….she wasn’t in the afternoon finals. Bummer, but not a huge surprise. She had done well, but so had at least half the other students in her section, and it’s always impossible to tell how the judges are going to make their determinations. The judges write comment slips for each of the participants, which are available for the students to pick-up at the same time as the final results. I was only able to read the two comment sheets written in English, but just as an example of how varied the judges opinions can be, one judge wrote only that they enjoyed my student’s speech and that my student had a lot of passion. The other English-writing judge made MANY comments…you had pronunciation problems, there were mistakes with the English in your script, your gestures in the beginning were unnecessary but got better towards the end of the speech, etc.

We all decided to stay to watch the afternoon finals. It was our first chance to see a few of the speeches from the students in the other section. Of the final speeches, the topics were quite varied: about endangered cranes on a small island in southern Japan, about establishing a national Science Day so Japanese people can learn to have a more “scientific eye” relative to daily life, how joining a local international group with her mother developed the student’s opinion that we are all the same regardless of where we are from, how rice was the greatest food ever, the confidence that a student was able to build from attending a 2-day workshop held by an international group of university students called “The Young Americans,” a student’s unusual hobby of playing the Japanese traditional musical instrument ‘the shamisen,’ learning how to become a good Student Council President, and how annoyed a girl was with losing the Student Council President race apparently just because her last-minute opponent was a boy, and in Japan, boys always come first…but she’s not cool with that concept (even the fact that boys names are all read before girls names during roll-call each morning bothers her now), so she told us all to wait 20 years to see her picture on the front of the national newspapers as the first female Prime Minister.

There was a lot of energy in a lot of the final speeches, and/or the speech topics were really interesting. I think it was obvious to everyone that the final judgment would be a toss-up between the two Presidential speeches…they were both REALLY good, and both students had very good presence, delivery, and brought the audience into their speeches (which is difficult to do in a foreign language!). My student really liked the first presidential speech…done by a boy. I did too, but the girl’s speech was really good too….and I figured that last year’s winner had been a boy, so how cool would it be if this year’s winner was a girl, especially considering her speech topic. She won. She’ll be going to the All-Japan speech contest sometime soon. THAT contest would be really interesting to watch! But alas….

Anyway, my student didn’t seem too shocked or appalled that she didn’t make it to the finals. She really seemed to enjoy watching the speeches of the other students, which I think was very mature and enlightened of her! She really enjoys English anyway, and this experience was just a great one for her to have…good fodder for moving on into high school and university! It was a lot of fun for me too, not just attending the speech contests, but it’s always nice to have an opportunity to work more closely with a student, rather than just stand in front of all of them and read vocabulary words at them. And I’m sure it was an interesting experience for her, just training with me! I made her read her speech in the gym during club practices, from the table tennis balcony, on a platform at the head of the outdoor sports grounds, watch “Toastmasters” videos on YouTube, and talk to me about specifics regarding the TV show she saw about street kids in other countries in Asia, which is what her speech was about. I even said to her that I hope in 10 years, she randomly remembers back to her speech contest training, and how crazy her ALT was. :-D