Judge O
October 8th, 2005I was recently invited to be a judge at the First Santai English Teacher’s English Speaking Contest. Yeah, it doesn’t really roll off the tongue, eh? In fact, despite this being the First, I was a judge at a very similar if somewhat smaller contest last spring. Previously the field of eight contestants wrapped up around noon but the recent contest fielded thirty-two entrants from around the county and looked to be an all day affair.
A week or so prior I was a judge at an internal school contest where four teachers vied for two positions. A bit uncomfortable, I wish I could have passed on that one since even though I was just one judge I can’t help but feel a bit awkward when discussing it later with those that were passed over. Instead I tried to focus on helping those that were selected to represent our school. The first part of the contest would be a prepared speech so that was the easiest thing to help them with. Since the time leading up to the contest was going to be busy for all of us I decided a good way to help him would be to read the speech they had prepared and record it as an mp3, (m-p-san they insist on calling it. Despite it being to English letters and a number they not only don’t think to pronounce it as m-p-3 but they think it quite funny when I do.), so they could listen and speak along at their leisure. It turned out that the prepared speech portion was just a small part but also integral in advancing to the next stage as the field was pared down to twelve. I was pretty proud that both of my teachers advanced.
Just as China has an incredible disparity between the richest rich and the poorest poor so to did this contest have an epic disparity between the best speakers and the, um, others.
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