A quick word about speech contests

Last Saturday I saw two of my students participate in the Toyama Prefecture Junior High School Speech Contest - and what a strange event it was!

The competition started at 1pm and didn't finished until about 5.30pm, by which time we had all watched about sixty students talking about all sorts of things from world poverty, to how they broke their leg, or how nice their friends were, to why maps in Australia are upside down. It was a real marathon.

What was particularly interesting was the delivery of most of the speeches. Some of the students were prancing around left, right and centre, and gesticulating like their lives depended on it! I can't begin to imagine the amount of time and effort that must have gone into it all.

Unfortunately my students didn't win (it may have been the lack of gesticulation and prancing). Which was a real shame considering we had trekked out of the countryside and ventured into the city. I would have thought we should have got some credit for that - we are but country bumpkins.