Two weekends ago, Makenzi asked me if I wanted to go to a speech competition. Not knowing what it was or what to expect, I said, "sure," and I went to the college building and to the room she told me. As I was sitting there, I saw some of my students and others pacing around looking over their notes, trying to get in some last minute preparations.
Ashley came in and talked with me about the competition. Makenzi and Jason were asked to be judges for that night, but Ashley asked if I would judge the next night. I said I would. So this is how the competition goes:
First round: Everyone has prepared a small speech about a certain topic. This year the topic is: "When Confucius Meets Socrates." A rather difficult topic, I think, considering that it has to be in English. I do not think I would be very good at this kind of thing in any of the languages I study. Anyway, the contestants are judged on a 1-10 scale for their style, content, and presentation. After their presentation, one of the judges asks a question pertaining to the speech and the contestant has to quickly think of an answer and respond. All of the scores for each person are averaged and only a certain number advance to the next round.
Second round: Each person is given a proverb and they have about 5 minutes to prepare an analysis. They then have to stand and present their analysis to the judges. After their analyses, the contestants had to answer three multiple-choice culture questions, such as, "Who wrote Sons and Lovers?" (It is D.H. Lawwrence, btw.) Their analysis scores and the culture questions were added together and averaged, again with only a certain number of people advancing to the third and final round.
Third round: The contestants were shown a picture and they had to immediately analyze it. Most of the pictures were symbolic and could have had some deep analysis. But because the contestants were speaking in a foreign language, it sufficed to just try to explain the picture.
The winner was the person who survived all three rounds and who received the highest average score in the third round.
The whole competition took about two and a half hours. The first night, the winner was an International Politics major.
Ashley came in and talked with me about the competition. Makenzi and Jason were asked to be judges for that night, but Ashley asked if I would judge the next night. I said I would. So this is how the competition goes:
First round: Everyone has prepared a small speech about a certain topic. This year the topic is: "When Confucius Meets Socrates." A rather difficult topic, I think, considering that it has to be in English. I do not think I would be very good at this kind of thing in any of the languages I study. Anyway, the contestants are judged on a 1-10 scale for their style, content, and presentation. After their presentation, one of the judges asks a question pertaining to the speech and the contestant has to quickly think of an answer and respond. All of the scores for each person are averaged and only a certain number advance to the next round.
Second round: Each person is given a proverb and they have about 5 minutes to prepare an analysis. They then have to stand and present their analysis to the judges. After their analyses, the contestants had to answer three multiple-choice culture questions, such as, "Who wrote Sons and Lovers?" (It is D.H. Lawwrence, btw.) Their analysis scores and the culture questions were added together and averaged, again with only a certain number of people advancing to the third and final round.
Third round: The contestants were shown a picture and they had to immediately analyze it. Most of the pictures were symbolic and could have had some deep analysis. But because the contestants were speaking in a foreign language, it sufficed to just try to explain the picture.
The winner was the person who survived all three rounds and who received the highest average score in the third round.
The whole competition took about two and a half hours. The first night, the winner was an International Politics major.
The next night, I went back to judge, along with Jason and Makenzi. It was the same rules, but all of the contestants were English majors, as compared to the night before, which was all non-English majors. Half of the contestants this night were my students, which might have been seen as judge bias, but I was fair with all of the contestants. In the end, one of my students won. Both she and the boy from the first night will compete in Jinan at the provincial speech competition.
As a thank you present, I got a cool tea mug. It has a spot where one puts the tea leaves and then add water, so that after it is done steeping, the leaves will stay in the mug.