It's competition time!

[WonnabeBiker]

Have you been involved in training students for some competitions? How was it? Care to share?

I'm incandescent with fury over Thai interference. Interference by people who cannot even pronounce words and read properly, let alone tell a story. But they change the script without notice and then pull a student who put in incredible hours to do <deleted> spelling bee instead.

[SlyAnimal]

I've assisted with training students for their skits, and we didn't have our first choice of students, since the best ones got assigned to speeches etc instead, but never had any swapped out on us. I trained both the upper and lower secondary school groups last year, and on the whole, my experience was pretty good with training them (I actually even wanted to go back and help this year, despite having finished at the school, but the competition fell at an inconvenient time).

I was amazed at how dedicated the students were, one group actually stayed at the school for 1-2 weeks before the competition to practice, while the other group showed such a massive improvement that I was completely blown away. As "The King" initially struggled to even read the script, let alone pronounce it coherently, but by the time the competition arrived, he had memorised all of his lines perfectly, with great pronunciation and excellent emotion in his voice + actions, I think both performances would have been competitive with Farang school plays, although unfortunately neither group won.

[scooterboy]

How was it? Horrible.

You get an "appointed" student (or students) to teach - not one of your own choosing. No information of just what you have to teach. This falls at the same time as the mid-term exams, so the kids aren't particularly interested in learning maths, speeches, spelling, etc. as they have to practice for exams. Things go better when the exam period is over - except that the school sports trials begin, so again the students are often more motivated to play sports, than to sit with boring subjects in their free time.

Finally, the official list of competition subjects arrives at the school, bit nobody in the admin dept. bothers to look at it or pass the info on to the respective teachers. Two days before the actual competition starts, someone moves ass and the list finally gets out to - whoever. The list is naturally full of grammatical errors.....

The teachers now have almost two days to teach the kids about whatever subjects that are on the list. Hopeless? Well, yes, as some of the teachers can't even read and understand what the subjects are about.

Sorry I can't be more positive about this, but it's a total waste of time and effort - at least in our school.

Next year I don't doubt that it'll be a repeat of this year's circus...

[stevo2]

What makes me laugh is the "impromptu speech" contest.

They give a list of subjects. The teachers then give the student a written speech to memorise.

Most don't have a clue what they are saying. I have been a judge many times. Ask the students a question about what they have just said and you get a blank stare.

If any of the Thai students are ever going to speak good English the should be able to make a speech at a moments notice, and not just about family, school, hobbies and myself.

Having said that it will never happen. I would like to see the teachers try to do a real impromptu speech. Now that would be a laugh.

[lostinisaan]

We're in the process to get all students "sorted out", right now. From lower primary, up to lower secondary level. Just found out today that there'll be huge changes in speech competitions.

Instead of just "My school, my family, myself, " it's now changed to: "I love my school, because of"........"My happy family"....."This is myself" for P.1-3.

The usual speeches for the upper primary level are changed into: " How to get happy in your life"........."How to get healthy"....." I don't like pollution".....

Students doing "Multi skills" now will also have to be able to write about " good health"....."my school" ....and "My province."

The competitions are already on the 28th and I do not see light at the end of the tunnel. I've got four students from a speech to ASEAN quiz.

In part two of the ASEAN quiz, the students will have to write down the answers of ten ASEAN related questions.

I'm the one who'll read the 10 questions, one misspelled word and one point's gone.

We just had a meeting at educational area xx office ( of course conducted in Thai) and they're really trying to rip me of, by sending my 20 questions to a younger Thai teacher of a school in the sticks.

Her plan was to receive all 100 questions from the other five judges, plus adding her questions then "choosing" 60 of them. She gave me her facebook username and is expecting me to send her my questions.

But I decided to let our supervisor from edu office choose the questions. There's only one English guy, myself and a Filipino who actually understand English.

The rest of the judges have a hard time having a basic conversation in English. I'm pretty sure that the hosting school will win, as usual.

Please be aware that cheating is a big issue, as they seem to fight for their lives.

The "main" judge at my former school got paid 60 K, three" judges" then split the money and the winner was the worst student of all.

There was a time when I really enjoyed to train students for such competitions, but I'd be more than happy now, not to be involved. Nor being a judge.-

Edited September 19, 2014 by lostinisaan

[WonnabeBiker]

Well, yesterday was my first provincial competition. It drew quite a crowd. Our school hired 3 buses and there were dozens of other schools...

Had to be a judge in the multi skills competition. Speaking, listening and describing a picture with words.

The topic they had to write about was recycling. a minimum of 150 words was desired. Some wrote 100% off topic (introducing themselves instead). Others managed just about 20 words. While a few produced remarkable essays. (Who in their right mind gives the same 5 points for "grammar" as for the "concept"?!?

TBH, with this kind of grading system, the whole idea get perverted.

Then there were some who were incredibly nervous. Two of these girls could speak all right. But nerves got them tongue tied.

Then there were some who couldn't or wouldn't answer a single question. Why did they come? who sent them - and why?

There were 5 judges. Not sure the truly best student won. 2 were head-to-head. One wrote a fantastic essay. Enumerating facts and ideas like a native student at the university level. While another one wrote more and also used good language.

Personally, I would have loved to say something encouraging to each and every one of those girls. (Not a single boy showed up. I wonder, why?).

It was a tough week. How would you feel if someone who cannot even read properly is engaged in story-editing and heavy handed backseat driving?!? The pecking order plays a role. and since I had to train a fantastic student, it didn't really impact her (likely) winning. Let's grab some lime light and hope the glory will rub off onto me (or what are such Thai teachers thinking? Any ideas?)

Me telling the Thai dancer how to improve on their dancing routine?! But hey, who needs to understand something when it comes to pulling rank?!? And it pains me to see how much higher substandard English speaking Thai teachers are regarded vs someone who clearly knows a subject better and can actually tell a story properly.

Among those judges was a new graduate from KK university. A Thai-Chinese lady with superb English. Alas, she will be making less than 40% in her first year AFAIK. There you have something that is very wrong with Thai education. They somehow do not recognize true ability! The 4.0 grade is another example. It's far too wide. And it's unfair to the very best students who score >95/100.

[benj005]

I don't know what type of competition they do in Thailand. In South Korea they would mostly do speaking competitions. Our director (boss) had the habit of bringing in the students work and we had to write the essay for them. It wasn't even their work. The only concern was that he/she won the competition. There were times I was getting ready to complete my lesson plans, and she would pop in and expect a 2 page written completed by the next day! Then the Korean student would take it home to memorize.

They always won first place.

Edited September 20, 2014 by benj005

[lostinisaan]

I don't know what type of competition they do in Thailand. In South Korea they would mostly do speaking competitions. Our director (boss) had the habit of bringing in the students work and we had to write the essay for them. It wasn't even their work. The only concern was that he/she won the competition. There were times I was getting ready to complete my lesson plans, and she would pop in and expect a 2 page written completed by the next day! Then the Korean student would take it home to memorize.

They always won first place.

Thailand is a little bit different. Most thesis for Thai English teachers, holding a Master's in English are/were written by foreigners.

None of the speeches is written by a student, all they've got to do is memorizing it, then the right body language, etc...

Would you really ask a student one question what the meaning of the last sentence was, they couldn't tell you so.

If there're only Thai judges, they often try to manipulate the result by paying some money to the judges.

That's really annoying, when you'd put a lot of time and energy into tutoring a student and the guy from the hosting school wins.

The hub of lost faces......

[brianp0803]

For competition level, master's students and PhD students, often the students don't even attempt to write the paper. The assignment is given immediately to a foreign teacher to write.

The staff of the director of my last school rotated teachers to write research papers with due date and rubric for "conferences" the director was attending. Everyone knew it was for school.

Many teachers teaching primary or high school received one assignment but some received multiple assignments. No extra pay. Part of you job.

When having someone else write university research papers for us is practiced by directors of schools, why would we expect different from the students?

I once asked students to write a paper about plagiarism. Most of the papers I got were blatantly plagarized

I didn't know if I should laugh or cry.

A good competition would have an impromptu speech written at the competition.

Schools want awards, even if its not a true reflection of the schools teaching quality.