::A Geek in Korea::

I have speaking classes with sixth grade elementary school students. Once a class, I pull out a stopwatch, give them a topic, and they try to hit as close to the time limit as they can. They are rewarded on time and fewest mistakes. They are expected to be able to take a topic and make a response. They need an introduction, three points with examples and details, as well as a conclusion. Since there is an element of time involved in major testing situations, they are given a limited time to prepare, usually no more than five minutes. Then they have to speak with natural sentences, correct pronunciation, and finish within a minute. They’ve been doing this for months. This is their entire class.

Today I gave them their topic and assigned them to go by the order of the phone numbers. I need some way of assigning who goes first, otherwise they all complain. They usually do rock, paper, scissors. I decided since no one knew before I looked at the attendance sheet who would go first, it was the same as a random choice. A girl was told she had two minutes to prepare, as she had the lowest phone number.

This prompted a huge complaint out of her. She said she needed ten extra minutes to prepare if she was going to go first. This would have been the entire rest of the period, which is ridiculous and completely unacceptable. She was hesitant to go first because she thought the other students would think she made a mistake. We’ve been doing these speeches for months. No one has ever judged a response because it went first. She’s gone first before by luck of the draw, but she didn’t complain before. She had the entire outline of her speech prepared, but she wasn’t willing to speak out loud about it.

I told her that she wouldn’t always have the luxury to pick when she wanted to do something, so the best thing would be to just go and get it over with, even if she didn’t like going first. No one else was willing to take her spot when she asked them to switch. I didn’t rewrite the names, because I had wasted enough time.

The “Korean thing” to do would be to give her a free pass because she complained, and pick someone else to go first. That’s what she was expecting. Whenever someone in a group whines enough, they are supposed to get their way to keep the harmony of the group. Other people are supposed to bend over backwards to keep everyone else happy, because in theory they’d do the same for you. She knew if she could hold out, she’d be going to be last. Eventually though, someone was going to have to go first.

When she started crying, I was a bit shocked. She’s in sixth grade and she’s never been in the position where she’s actually got to do something first? Her English is the best, or one of the best, in the class. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself by speaking, but she certainly did when she started crying. I’m not going to force a crying student to speak. As soon as she started crying, someone jumped in and volunteered. I dropped eye contact and just let her recover her dignity as I went around the room. By the time class was almost finished, she was ready to give her speech. She did wonderfully, which made the whole drama act all the more stupid.

That sort of “character lesson” about doing something when you don’t want to isn’t my responsibility. I know my father put me through plenty of those sorts of trails to test character. In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing he did, as it helped with my public speaking fear. I got my first pocket knife as a gift for being my class’ announcer at a PTA meeting in front of the entire school. I hated it at the time, but I can remember being in front of a crowd, terrified, but getting through a speech. That made it better later. It wasn’t like the girl was talking to the entire school. She only had her five classmates. She’s talked in front of them dozens of times before, so I don’t know why today was any different. Pssh, teenagers.

Tags: speech, stage fright, teenagers, esl, class