English Competition

This past week a friend of mine invited me to lunch in order to formerly invite me to do the honor of judging the freshman management class English competition. The winner of this class competition would go on to compete against other classes, and then against the best in the school with an opportunity to compete on live television amongst the best in the province. I agreed to help, not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. So the next night, I showed up to a class full of students who were anxiously awaiting their classmates giving their best English speeches. I asked a fellow judge if the speeches would all be business related since they were management majors. She replied "no, it is not business." I said "then what kind of management?" She said "Just management. Just to manage some things." So apparently I was going to be listening to the future managers of anything and everything give their best speeches. The format was that each contestant would give a prepared speech not to surpass 3 minutes 30 seconds. Then they would draw a topic out of a box, and be given 30 seconds to prepare a 1 minute 30 second speech about that topic, and then be asked a random question by a judge with no time to prepare a 45 second answer. What pressure! When I received the judges' scoring sheet, the categories were as follows:

Speech and topic:
1. Pronunciation 30 points
2. Content 30 points
3. Ability to use English 10 points
4. Overall appearance 10 points (apparently you get deducted based on the judges totally subjective opinion on your ugliness...)
Answer to the question:
1. Pronunciation 10 points
2. Topic to the center 10 points (I still didn't know what this means. I wrote down totally random numbers from 7 to 9 the whole time.)

We were handed each contestant's score sheet with their name, contact information, and speech title. The titles ranged from the inspired (You only have one life!) to the confusing (What is English) to the completely unashamedly plagiarized in verbatim (I have a dream).

So far as I could tell, this is how an English speech competition works in this country-
1. All speeches must contain catchy English cliches that make it obvious the contestant has no idea what they are talking about. If the entire speech is made up of nothing but cliches, this is even better, even if they contradict each other. For example: "You only have one day, so live it like it is your last. The past is behind you, the present is here, and the future is determined by what you do with the present. Cling to your past, for the memories there are made forever."
2. If you forget part of your speech and awkwardly stand in silence, the audience must awkwardly applaud. If you say "I'm sorry. I'm a little nervous." The audience must applaud even louder.
3. Every speech must finish with bravado. Only, bravado here means loud and monotoned, with no insertation of appropriate punctuation. This must build from a nervous, shaky quiet, to a loud determined finish. Even if you are butchering one of the greatest speeches ever given in the English language. "freE AT LAST FREE AT LAST THANK THE GOD ALMIGHTY FREE AT LAST!!!!!!!!"
4. If stating facts in your speech, they don't have to be backed by any scientific evidence, or true from any standpoint. "Imagine what life is like when there is no water left in the world. That is why we have to conserve water now. For if we keep up like this, soon we will realize life without water." (Fact: a drought in your part of the world, no matter how severe, does not mean that the entire world is running out of water. Not even Al Gore would buy into this.)
5. When judging the competition, it is not considered inpolite to inpolitely criticize the contestant, even though there was no time allotted for critiquing the contestants. This is what I call the "well I have a microphone, so I should use it" syndrome. My fellow judges' critiques ranged anywhere from the Simon Cowellesque brutal "It is clear that you have a long way to go in learning English." to the take a knife and make a personal stab "You say you have never felt loved, I am sure your parents would be sad to here you say that." to the completely ridiculous and pointless "Have you heard of Obama's election speech. That speech reminded me a lot of his election speech." (this one was given after the MLK copy. He has his African American history a little confused.)

Having finished the contest, the winner was a girl who I thought honestly gave the best speech of the night. She spoke on why Marie Curie was a hero to her. The speech was completely original, and in great English. I gave it high marks. At one point in the speech, the judge beside me leaned over and said "You ask the question this time. I don't know what she is talking about." Apparently if your English is better than the judge's, they'll give you high marks. Second place? You guessed it, Martin Luther King Jr. I was so frustrated by the end of that speech that I made sure it didn't win. It was like when someone tries to cover an Alicia Keys song. Even if you are a good singer, you aren't THAT good, and the slightest mistake ruins the whole thing. My score for this girl was an outlying 63 out of 100. I even deducted points for ugliness just based on principle. If I scored her a 63, and her average was still high enough to win second place, you can imagine that the other judges were inspired, as they should have been. If that's the first time you'd ever heard that speech, you would think it is one of the greatest ever, because it is.

For those who didn't win, so long as they let go of the past and move on to the future... or cling to the past for its memories, they'll continue to try their hardest in hopes of advancing further in next year's competition.