::A Geek in Korea::

While my school might have sucked the fun out of Halloween, when it comes to testing and ways to make children study and memorize, they are truly a sight to behold. The "Announcer Contest" was today. While I had taken to calling it a "Speaking Contest" in class, it turns out that "Announcer" was a better word to use. My director set up a desk with a microphone and a faux background to simulate a newscast program. Then she got a projector and camera, so that the students were "on television", projected for everyone to see on a wall. The students than sat at the desk and read their selection of text like a newscast. It was pretty awesome.

The students were listed on a paper handed to me and my foreign coworker. I would call out their name and they would go up to the front. We then graded them on different categories. We noted if they had memorized the text and awarded extra points. We also had to note things like intonation, pronunciation, confidence, accuracy, speed. It was fairly frantic trying to mark down the scores, keeping the other students quiet, while also keeping everything running as smoothly as possible. The Korean teachers carried around cardboard tube cudgels to keep the noisier students in line. Two of my students took my helpful suggestions to heart and actually looked at the camera like a professional broadcaster reading a late breaking news show would. It was wonderful.

The margin between some of the levels was brutally evident. All of the higher level students of a particular grade performed significantly better than that students in the lower skill class. The odd thing was the near perfect agreement all of the grading teachers had about the top two or three students at any level. While we assigned different scores, the students that were "tops" were clearly distinguished. This meant that the factors we were grading on were well chosen, and that the students had been put into the proper classes judged on their levels. Yay for accurate evaluations!

Eventually, a set of winners will be chosen that will get a sweet incentive to continue their excellence. I told my director I’d love to do a speech contest like this every month, because it was a lot of fun, and it was a great motivator for the students. It’s also a hell of a lot easier than yelling at classrooms of students to practice their speeches. The students that didn’t work hard had the embarrassment of their peers watching them make mistakes. Everyone accepted that because their were two judges, no "final winners" could be announced when we went back to class. No one was asking for extra points or trying to complain about their scores either. That’s very refreshing.