Did Your Students Win In A Competition, Or Are You Worth The Money They're Paying You?

[lostinisaan]

Hello and Sawasdee Khrap,

We just had our superficial competitions yesterday, ( was a Sunday!) and I wanted to share my experiences being a judge and a trainer in an ASEAN Quiz competition.

All started with a meeting at our superficial educational area xx office two weeks ago. Of course was in conducted in Thai.

Why would such a meeting, where all involved are English teachers be conducted in English,as it's an English competition? Only Buddha knows the answer.

They'd decided that I'd be a judge in an ASEAN quiz competition, together with five Thai English teachers. So we sat down to "talk" about how to do it.

It took only three minutes, a very young, but good looking English teacher hands me over her facebook username and the order to send my 20 questions to her facebook account.The other guys seemed to have agreed, before I even sat down.

It might be worth to add that i had the great honor to "teach" our grade six students, who also joined in some ASEAN stuff, another M.2 girl a story, a grade six girl some Multu Skill assignments, plus several speeches for lower primary level. My free time was gone for a few weeks. Sometimes I had five kids around me, giving them different tasks,.

Of course did I not send my questions in and brought them to the competition yesterday. They decided that they'd already chosen 60 questions and left mine completely out.

Somebody gave me a whole set of questions, plus the ten questions I had to read for the second round. Holy buffalo!! Too many mistakes in almost all questions.

I had my own ten questions typed up, pointed out some huge mistakes and could finally use my own questions, which of course were not really unknown to my own students.

I smelled buffalo shit everywhere, as it was clear that the 60 questions were way too difficult, for example: "What is the International Telephone Dialing Code for Indonesia?" and a lot of other really shitty questions. I knew that it was a set up, but was quite happy to have the "power" to use my own questions.

But the biggest problem was if they'd even make it to the second round. A short visit to the local temple and they were in the second round.

Then my time to read the ten questions. My students couldn't remember the answer of the tenth question ,but did well and won gold.

Same for my M.2 girl, a fantastic story, great English and an unbelievable body language. My spelling Bees won gold, as well as my third grader with my handwritten school speech.

When we finally received all the positive results, I've seen the other judges, who tried to rip me off. They were really furious, as they were sure that only their students would pass the first round. And the ten questions, that they couldn't use, were so weird that only their students would have known the right answers.

Miracles do happen in the Land of Smiles and Why's.

Seems that my visit to the temple was successful, I was so close to even receive the next lottery numbers.

But would monks really be monks if they could win 40 million baht and buy a Lear Jet?

I will hopefully have some time to relax now, as the next competitions will be held soon. Better in the second term. Good competitions for all......

[BruceMangosteen]

My experiences with these competitions differs. I find them very carefully protected and fair. The only exception is the "impromptu" speeches. It seems everyone speaks about "sufficiency economy" or "global warming" and the rules are not spelled out well, allowing it.

[Scott]

Years ago, we had a competition which was a general knowledge type of quiz. Several schools (maybe 10 -- all affiliated) had teams at the competition. About 6 weeks before the competition, each school had to submit a list of questions and answers. These were then sent to all the other schools to help 'tutor' the students.

The big difficulty was that many, many of the questions were really poorly worded and numerous questions had absolutely the wrong answer. Things like, "what is the capital city of the USA?" Answer: "New York".

Since there were a lot of wrong answers, we were instructed that only the answers in the tutorial that was sent out could be used. The team that won actually had more wrong answers than the team that was second, but lost because they gave correct answers!!

After that, I nicely declined to be involved in these competitions.

[zeichen]

I haven't been to a competition where the host school didn't have the advantage. There was one English speech competition where the winner was half Thai but clearly a native English speaker who lived half is life in the US. I advised that we boycott the competition the next year but our school's decision was to bring in a ringer and had one of the Native English speaking teacher's children enter the competition. He wasn't even half Thai but at least had brown hair.

As for the question competition portion. We had the same kind of issues where certain schools had every correct answer even if the answers weren't technically correct. US doesn't have 52 states. I really wish people would stop teaching this. Indian isn't the language of India.

My question was why don't polar bears eat penguins and not even the teachers could figure out the answer. I was also told that I was silly for teaching students that penguins were birds.

I feel for you 100%. I am purposely absent any time events like this are happening. I also make sure that I do extra stuff all other times so that someone else is forced to volunteer as I have already done my duty elsewhere.

[schondie]

These competitions are hit and miss. I was the judge at one competition where the judges (friends of the host school's English teacher) asked me to change my scores to favour one student. I didn't but found that when all the final scores were in that my scores had been changed as we were using pencils. The next round I used a pen and kept a close eye on the tallying up. There were so many discrepancies that most of the other schools complained to the Basic Education office and the school is now banned from holding any more competitions.

Other competitions I have been involved in have been far better organised and far more transparent.

[Fatty123]

I've been to a few 'comps' that have seemed fair and a few that have been obviously fixed. An example of the latter was when our school rep (a P3 student with a large head due to the size of her brain) lost to 'the kid who always wins'. A girl from a rival (and more prestigious) school. You may say ''Ah, but you would say it was fixed if your student didn't win''. I wouldn't. Really. Some examples (more or less, my memory is a little hazy) in the final round were:

Our student: What are your aspirations for the future?

The Student that always wins: What colour is a banana?

Our student: What does 'a stitch in time saves nine' mean?

TSTAW: Name five fruits.

T'was fixed, I tell yee!

[Fookhaht]

At one English-language competition, I was asked to read the questions to the student competitors. After all, I was the only native speaker and my presence gave credibility to the entire farce. The questions had all been submitted by the English Thai teachers.

The very first question was so badly worded, grammar-wise, that I stopped in mid-sentence and told the teacher next to me that I couldn't read it in good conscience.

Her response: "Oh that's okay, Ajarn, because that's how we speak English in Thailand. Just go ahead."

[Kf6vci]

Well, a fantastic M6 girl chose story telling. Came 6th out of 14. That is quite impossible IMHO. She was that good. <deleted>?!?

The spelling bee gold of another student was no surprise.

Was the judge for multi skills and they wouldn't let me judge parts of the competition. And who knows what they put into their calculators?

soem couldn\t say a word. Others missed the topic by 100%. And just wrote about themselves. Then there were a few very good students. No idea who won - they wouldn't share that with me.

[lostinisaan]

My experiences with these competitions differs. I find them very carefully protected and fair. The only exception is the "impromptu" speeches. It seems everyone speaks about "sufficiency economy" or "global warming" and the rules are not spelled out well, allowing it.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. A friend of mine, married to a Thai high school teacher was so upset about his own wife that she paid 60 K to four judges at a speech competition.

She paid that money to my former colleague and her student with an unbelievable bad speech had won the competition. Happened two years ago in Ubon Rtachtchathani.

At another speech, where I was a judge, they only handed out pencils, but I did make a copy of my sheet. When they announced the winner, I showed them my completely different result, what they had.

But nobody and I mean nobody was really responsible for it. I took my hat and went home. Felt sorry for the kids who were really good.

A well known school in Ubon used an EP student for ordinary, as well as EP set up competitions, as the competitions were on two days. Three judges of the same school sat there judging their own students.

Please tell me that they did not judge in favor of their own students. G'Day.

Edited September 30, 2014 by lostinisaan

[lostinisaan]

Here's one of my favorite ASEAN quiz questions:

40. What does ASSC stand for?

a. ASEAN Socio- Cultural Community b. ASEAN Security Comission c. ASEAN Security Community d. ASEAN Soccer Community

( Damn Yanks!! I apologize. )

The joke about this question was that all answers are wrong, as the ASSC should be ASCC. But the students know that, they said........

Edited September 30, 2014 by lostinisaan

[Johnnie99]

'Superficial'?

Outrageous. They are an essential part of Thai culture.

Clearly you have not been on a 'Thai Culture' course.

[SOTIRIOS]

....it reads a lot better on paper.....

[amse]

Thailand education is always rigged in the Thai corner, it's not about learning anything, but Saving Face instead.

[cbluck58]

They are nonsense - they exist only for the gratification of the schools and the teachers whose time would be better spent providing education instead of tawdry spectacle - and you can't win if you are not Thai anyway !!

[chadillac666]

agreed....it is why the no fail system is so embedded in Thai culture....When I firrst started teaching nere, ethics wnt out the window after about a year. Nobody fails and 60 percent is the lowest grade possible. Why do the foreigeners that teach here wonder why the country is so ass backwarrds?? EVERYBODY PASSES

[carter1882]

Try taking your kids to the national English quiz show competition at central rama two on the weekend of october 25/26. This is impeccably organised by the national crossword game (scrabble) sudoku and amath association of thailand. This club organises a huge amount of events throughout the country for the above games as well as kham khom which is thai scrabble. It is fair and there are good prizes. For example the questions for the quiz have been set by the australian inventor of the word-up game used by many a tefl classroom. I have been involved with this fantastic association since the early 90s. One if its highlights is the international king's cup scrabble event (in English) held in bkk each june or july. In addition to the inspiration for kids of seeing the best scrabble players in the world in thailand there are competitions for kids of all school ages. This attracts 10,000 children from all over thailand. Promotion of scrabble in particular is superb in thailand. Two thais have gone through the thai school system and the scrabble scene here to be crowned world champions in 2003 and 2009. When i see people whinging about competitions in thailand and the abilities of thais it does make me cross. There are ample opportunities for kids to thrive in brilliant competitions if you kniw where to look. Contact the association through thaicrossword.com or pm me for further details of how to take part. Teachers looking for great opportunities for their kids should not despair.

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been removed.