Skills Contests - Impromptu Speech

[Jim's_a_Thai_Fox]

Hi,

In our province, our school hosts several skills contests each year. A week last Wednesday saw the latest farce!

Brief overview: the students from the various matayom schools taking part are given the 3 topics of the impromptu speech competition 2 weeks before the contest takes place. 5 minutes before they are due on stage to give their speech, they have to randomly choose 1 topic from the 3 to talk about. However, should the student not like their first choice, they can reject that choice and pick again!

You can imagine that these impromptu speeches are anything but. On the day, one kid had only prepared one speech, and unluckily for him, he didn't choose it on the day. No problem, he just told the judges that he was going to do the impromptu speech that he'd prepared anyway!!! Classic !!!

As a side note, only 1 student out of 15 actually did an impromptu speech, the others merely had their teachers write them and they did their best to memorize and regurgitate...

The rules for this contest are decided by the provincial educational authority. There is little wonder, with leadership and ideas emanating from places such as this, why Thailand's educational system will never be the SEA hub in 2015. What is it with this place that encourages such moronic practices????

TiT

[Scott]

I've seen things like this, but learning a language is baby steps and the more they get up and speak in English the better--not the best, but better than nothing at all.

I think of it like a piano recital--sometimes I am glad I know the song is "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", otherwise I might not recognize it.

Praise and reward for speaking are a good idea.

Best of luck.

[Frenchtouch]

Hi, Can you tell me what were the 3 topics? They always ask me to have these competitions in my school and I need some ideas? Thanks a lot

Edited July 22, 2010 by Frenchtouch

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

I saw these topics this week:

upper mathayom: patriotism, love to be thai, eagerness to learn, work committment, public minded

lowe mathayom: honesty, sufficiency economy, national unity

[marty147]

Hi, Can you tell me what were the 3 topics? They always ask me to have these competitions in my school and I need some ideas? Thanks a lot

Similar competition yesterday for M1-3 students in Maha Sarakam.

The three themes were:

The Environment

Being a Global Citizen

Communication

[JorakaeNoi]

I saw these topics this week:

upper mathayom: patriotism, love to be thai, eagerness to learn, work committment, public minded

lowe mathayom: honesty, sufficiency economy, national unity

With topics like these I am not surprised the students couldn't be bothered to come up with their own answers. Yawn.

[jcartermad]

Hi, Can you tell me what were the 3 topics? They always ask me to have these competitions in my school and I need some ideas? Thanks a lot

Similar competition yesterday for M1-3 students in Maha Sarakam.

The three themes were:

The Environment

Being a Global Citizen

Communication

I went to the very same EP forum and watched with interest, or should I say disinterest, the speech contests. It was clear to all that the teachers had written the speechs, the student had studied themt, memorised them, hardly understood them and then merely churned them out over a timed stop watch speech averaging 3 mins 20 secs. I watched student after student stop, think, translate Thai into English and then churn it out.

I even heard about one teacher writing the speech and the student merely read it. This was on the Weds.

One young girl from Roi-Et, about 12 years old, made a very short speech of 1 min 45 secs but everyone could hear that she used 100% of her own words. Did she win...erh no. Did a young lad that memorised the teachers speech win....erh YES. The girl did score well and won the silver award but I feel that students should turn up, have no prior knowledge of the subjects and then speak. Perhaps then it would be fair and a true reflection of their English Lang, skills.

As for the singing constest, twenty or so "when I was just a little boy" and "one moment in time" drove me completly bonkers. Some of the stands were excellent with the school making a real effort. Others were poor, no effort, no energy just selling teashirts, drinks etc. Still it was 3 days away and as a new EP school we learnt much. Next year all guns blazing.

[Jim's_a_Thai_Fox]

Hi,

It's good to hear that all these topics seem to be the same boring topics... ours were "how to be a good student", "Thai citizenship" and "how technology has influenced Thai society"...

Why don't the authorities simply let the kids come up with something that is interesting for them to talk about? It seems to be a strong recurring theme throughout the Thai education system - teachers/authorities imposing conditions and rules that suit themselves with no regard to what the students might think, i.e. there is a massive lack of 'student-centric' focus!

Cheers

James

[Scott]

Let the students come up with their own topics?

Well, I have tried that on more than one occasion and in several different areas from speeches to writing about something. It requires the students to have an interest and make a decision and some have neither. I have ended up assigning them with things.

[BruceMangosteen]

The Thai's don't care what the westerners think about their speech contest rules and methods.

All you do is complain. They are going to start weeding you out with the TCT and hiring more and more Filipino's from now on who simply show up in this country with Education degrees, are happy teaching, happy with the salary, and will judge contests without all this babble about how to do it. Thai's don't care what you westerners think about anything truth be told. You all cause problems with your asking "why" this and that.

Edited July 26, 2010 by BruceMangosteen

[Martian]

Although I agree with the spirit of what is being communicated here, there is much more to a speech contest than the content. I trained 2 speech contestants a few weeks back and made them write their own speeches on the provided topics. As a judge in competitions, I don't listen too much to the content of the speech because I know many teachers write the content for their students. I mainly judge them on the other aspects. I watch their poise and presentation, look for confidence and above all, the pronunciation of the English language. On pronunciation alone, you can accurately rank all the competitors and then use the other aspects when you have speakers who are very close to each other with regard to pronunciation. Just like everything else in Thailand, you need to look at things in context with the culture, traditions and the rules put forth for the competition and get on with it. Whether you believe the "impromptu" competition is impromptu or not, has no bearing on the situation whatsoever. I would definitely dramatically lower the score of a contestant who refused to speak about the subject they drew right before their speech. That is a fundamental violation of the rules from the get-go.

[sbk]

Wow, you guys are pretty hard. I did extemporaneous speaking in high school in the US and frankly, even for me, as a native english speaking 16 year old, it was brutal. I was scared standing in front of the crowd, nervous and stumbled my words. I would imagine it would be a million times more scary and nerve racking for a non-native English speaker.

[otherstuff1957]

A couple of years ago I coached a M3 student for one of these speaking contests. Fortunately he had lived in the US for 2 or 3 years and was pretty much a native speaker, so I didn't have to work on his English. I taught him some of the basics of public speaking and how to organize his ideas and write a quick outline. He went on to win 1st prize.

Edited August 4, 2010 by otherstuff1957

[Martian]

Wow, you guys are pretty hard. I did extemporaneous speaking in high school in the US and frankly, even for me, as a native english speaking 16 year old, it was brutal. I was scared standing in front of the crowd, nervous and stumbled my words. I would imagine it would be a million times more scary and nerve racking for a non-native English speaker.

Very good point. This is exactly why I approach judging speech competitions as I mentioned in my previous post.

Regards

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

A couple of years ago I coached a M3 student for one of these speaking contests. Fortunately he had lived in the US for 2 or 3 years and was pretty much a native speaker, so I didn't have to work on his English. I taught him some of the basics of public speaking and how to organize his ideas and write a quick outline. He went on to win 1st prize.

Not surprising. Any Thai student exposed for at least a year to western thinking would do well in these contests. I did speech contests and debates throughout high school and university. Impromptu speaking was 5 minutes of speaking with 5 minutes preparation. No knowledge of the topics in advance. Extemporaneous speaking was 7 minutes of speaking with 30 minutes of prep time on current events. We used the news weeklies as our research source during prep time. I just wish these kids wouldn't rely on memorized speeches. But there's no way to undo 10 or so years of inadequate education here in Thailand. Rote memorization is all they have been taught.