Last night I got the distinct pleasure of being one of the two judges of an English speech competition run by the school¡¯s English club. The club¡¯s president, a charming young man named Frank, approached me last Wednesday after class to see if I would like to do it, and having little else to do on a Saturday night (or, rather, nothing constructive to do) I agreed. Nadja, an English teacher from New Zealand, was the other judge, and we were asked to provide scores for 17 contestants from which six would be chosen to host English club events later in the semester.
The speeches ranged greatly in quality. One guy went to the podium, apologized for having a cold and not having a speech prepared, told us that ¡°a man is the master of his own destiny,¡± and that was that. A girl did much the same thing, so we couldn¡¯t exactly give her a good score, though as I consolation prize I would have gladly brought her home.
One young student, a freshman and newly-minted CCP member, told us about herself at a volume that could likely have been heard in Florida. Another talked about how foreign English teachers talked about stupid things in class and that discussions should center more on politics and economics (then we the judges tried to smack him around with a few politics questions that he answered quite well, nicely shutting us up). My favorite, if simply because she had guts, was a girl whose speech centered around male chauvinism and who concluded that men need women more than women need men. Very funny.
