English Competition

The other night I went to an English competition that Sunny put on for her two classes. She gave her students 5 speeches to choose from: I have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr., Gettysburg Address by Abe Lincoln, If I have Three Days to Live author unknown, a speech by a Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Feb.2 2009 at Cambridge University, and the last was Obama's Inaugural Address. I think its really funny that three of the speeches the students could choose are famous American speeches and even funnier is that no students choose to do the one Chinese speech. The majority of the students choose Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the next most popular was King's I have a Dream, then the rest of the students were split between Obama's speech and If I have Three Days to Live. So for the past week I've been busy with not only my 16 classes plus the 8 classes I picked up from Sev leaving, and also the increasing number of students wanting to practice their English after school but now also correcting these students speeches.
I can't tell you how many times I made students keep repeating words like consecrate, nullification, momentous, unalienable, and honoured. And if the students could get these words right I had to try to teach them how to say the 'th' sound. This sound is so difficult, words like 'these' and 'this' both come out like 'zis', and 'that' comes out 'zat', then words like 'with' and 'earth' come out 'wis' and 'ers'.
So my trick was to write 2 lists of words:
fathers..... forth
whether... with
rather...... thus
that......... birth
those....... earth
these

So, the students must first read: fathers, whether, rather, that, those, these, forth, with, thus, birth, and earth. I try my best to keep encouraging them, and I feel so bad because I can tell some students are so hard on themselves that they can't pronounce either 'th' sound correctly. Then I really make it hard on them, not to be mean but to help them, and they have to read left, right, left, right: fathers, forth, whether, with, rather, thus, that, birth, those, earth, these...
And on top of all these difficulties, some of the hardest sounds for them to make are the 'j' sound in the middle of a word, the 'tion' sound. And of course there is no 'v' in Chinese, so all their lives the students have been learning English from Chinese teachers who have never pronounced a 'v' correctly...
So, I don't know how long I will keep having nightmares from this one section from Lincoln's speech: "...zat. from. zis. ha-nerd. dead. we take.increased dewosin.to zat cause.for whits. zay gave. zeir last full .meyor of dewosin; zat we here. highly. resol. zat. zis. dead. sall not. have dead. in van; zat. zis. nasin. under God. sall have. a new birs. of freedom..." It would be such a nice dream if it came out like this, "...that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom..."
Then during the competition, Sunny had me be one of the judges... which was hard because I know how hard all of the students worked.
All 120 students from the 2 classes piled into the school's media room.
Sunny set-up the competition really well. She had the 2 most humorous students host the competition and then in between some speeches she had music, or a guest student sing a song, and she held drawings for prizes.
Even the students who didn't enter the competition were really into the whole ordeal, cheering and laughing and listening.

The winners got notebooks.
Here are the 3rd place winners. I'm so proud of all 3 of these students because they're all relatively shy and especially the boy spent a lot of time preparing.
The second place winners, also the funny hosts :)







And best of all, the first place went to the student I spent hours with helping last Sunday. And he made 90% of the corrections I helped him with!!!
Here are all of the students who participated in the competition. 25 of them!





As for my teaching, its going really really well! I haven't had any major problems in the last three weeks. And I feel like I have the attention of more and more students every week, and more and more often I'm surprised by the shy students starting to speak up in class. I think its helping that the students are finally getting used to my accent and able to understand the simple English, this makes my job so much easier. Also, one of the teachers I'm friends with came to watch me in her class the last 2 times, and she tells me she wants to adopt some of my 'western' teaching ways because it makes the students more comfortable to speak out in class. YAY :)
Have I mentioned that Sev went back to England because his Gran is sick. So, while hes been gone I've taken over his classes in grade 1, half (8 classes) a week were added to my 16 classes every week. At first when I agree to it I didn't think it would be so tiring, but now after 4 weeks of 24 classes, 1500 students, a week and English corner almost every day after school, I'm finally tired... But its ok because next week the students have their mid-term exams, for 3 days, then there is the national May 1st holiday, for 3 days. So, I have 6 days off!!! I'm hoping to travel north to the city of Xian. Then when I come back from a relaxing holiday Sev will be back and I can go back to a lazy 16 classes a week!! :)
Ok I'm off to bed now... I have basketball to play with some students tomorrow!