Do English teachers usually just write students’ speeches for the English happyoukai?

26 comments

1. Some do, some don’t. I edit with them, but I don’t write it for them. I’ve seen speeches that were very obviously not written by the student.

2. Generally speaking, there’s no way to ensure fairness or competitive integrity for any sort of “speech contest” in Japan, or really anywhere. This is not only for the reason you brought up, but also because plenty of students that go to those have experience abroad, foreigners in their family, or they live next to a military base or somewhere that has an authentic English speaking community in Japan.

   You’d have to screen contestants at a level of rigor that’s just not going to happen, and even if the only students allowed to participate were 100% Japanese born and raised that only learned English through the Japanese school system there would still be problems like ghostwriting, resources available to them, and the assessment criteria of the contest.

   Because of this, you need to decide what your students are actually participating in these contests for. If it’s “to win”, as in, to get prestige for your school/club, boost student confidence, or to win awards, you’ll need to use every advantage and recruit students that have “natural” ability. If it’s to improve your students’ English and challenge them, then you can ignore the ethical questions that these contests bring up and just do them as a club activity and exercise.

3. At my JHS in Osaka a girl is reciting a speech from Obama and I’ve been helping with pronunciation and linking.

4. Just generally, the students write their speech in Japanese, the hrt translates it into English, then you adjust ideas and sentences and structure (beginning, middle, end).

5. I’ve written speeches for students and even recorded it so they could mimic my presentation style. As an ALT, if you protest the school will complain to the dispatch and you’ll likely have to do it or someone from the dispatch will do it.

   You can’t win, but your student might…….

6. From my experience most of the students who have done it, just picked a story from the textbook and just memorized that for the contest.

7. At my school, we do about 3 big speech contests a year. Usually, the students write a draft and then bring it to the JTE and myself. We end up changing and rewording about 70% of the draft. My school is pretty intensive about speech contests though, the month before one I will meet with the students 1 on 1 for around 3-5 hours a week. I have judged many speech contests here, and I feel like at least 3 quarters are written by teachers or Google translate

8. Pretty much…
   At least when I was an ALT

9. Most schools I worked at simply had me edit and fix any major grammatical mistakes, but asked me to keep in anything small. Man, this brings back memories.

10. I edit with them and work on delivery.

11. Even if you did write the speech for the students, each contest is heavily dependent on who the judges are that it’s impossible to just walk in and win these things easily.

    The speech needs to be everything under the sun and not offensive, but at the same time positive, with pitch perfect pronunciation-I think you have more chance winning the area soccer tournament with soccer club than predicting what the judges are after, I wouldn’t sweat the legitimacy of the entrants personally..

12. More or less.

    My school has them write in Japanese on their own with recommendations.

    Then the translation is either roughly done by students (google translate) or teachers. So I wouldn’t really say it’s self written by that point.

    The contest is a joke but it’s good practice no matter how you look at it. But it’s still good practice for speaking English and learning new things.

13. The answer like a lot of stuff here is old reliable, every situation is different. Competition in my local area varied wildly every year that I was there depending on who was in charge, student motivation and who was mentoring etc.

    Sometimes the kid is the only one who put their hand up for the job or was pressured into it because the school didn’t have a candidate. Other times they’ve gone through a rigorous selection process inside their own grade level and are super motivated to compete.

    You are correct though, there is no real oversight on how they are selected and mentored. What level a student turns up to a competition at is a shit show of factors based on how much their circle of support cares and gets involved. Generally they are supposed to attempt to write it themselves. I’ve had cases where the kids pretty much did it all themselves with minimal oversight and just some practice sessions. Other times I’ve had to sit down and painstakingly edit things with them to produce something that isn’t going to leave them a crying mess on the day when they see the quality of their work vs the average expected standard.

    Some kids are just golden though. Every year there will be one or two standouts at a competition. They radiate that ‘IT’ factor that tends to win over the judges at these kinds of comps. The judging is the more arbitrary and egregious factor in my opinion. I’ve had kids that were clearly better than most get shot down to the lower ranks due to one judge having it out for them for whatever reason.

    So I guess to stop myself rambling more, yes, some kids get a lot of help. Usually its to make sure they don’t embarrass themselves and bring them up to the average level.

14. Where does editing for a student become writing for a student?

    ALT’s are not trained editors, and may go beyond what would be considered just helpful in most cases because they don’t want their student to use incorrect grammar somewhere and be embarassed.

15. All other things aside.

    If they practice with the ALT it does incredible things for their spoken English and their confidence using it!

16. I was a judge for a city English Speech Contest one year, and I caused an uproar by selecting a girl who had flawless pronunciation and intonation during her performance. I had to ask her if she was a native speaker just to be sure. All the other teachers were steamed because this girl’s topic was her summer vacation, while the boy they wanted to win had some tear-jerker story about his dying grandmother. He gave a good delivery, but this girl was streets ahead in her delivery.

    I said to the miffed teachers afterwards “this isn’t an ESSAY contest, it’s a SPEECH contest. The best SPEAKER gets the recognition.” In the back of my mind, it’s exactly because I’m quite certain the teachers were the ones writing these speeches on the students’ behalf, and a “victory” for the student is a secret victory for that teacher.

17. In my city we don’t. We go through and fix their grammar and stuff, but it’s 100% their ideas and word choice.

18. I would say, for the most part, yes. There are instances in which the student may have written (re: translated) an original speech in English but it’s the teacher who proofread it and made major changes to it. They are not too hard to spot.

19. I use to edit it and correct it but not write the whole thing …

20. I love your innocence kid. dont let this town take that away from ya. Said in a grizzled Hollywood agent voice.

21. I’ve both been a judge for and coached many junior high school speech contests over several years. At least in my area, the flow was:
    1. Student writes Japanese
    2. English teacher sometimes turns it into somewhat comprehensible English.
    3. ALT rewrites it to make it actually interesting and speech-like and then coaches the kid.
    This went for every school and every ALT in our town. So there are definitely no rules against editing/changing a speech. In a perfect world, they would write their own, but most teenagers don’t know how to write an award-winning speech without copious amounts of revision😅

    IMO the most important things are to make sure you choose words/phrases that the student will be able to remember and pronounce. Play to their strengths. It’s okay to repeat key phrases in speeches so use that to your advantage. Make absolutely sure they understand everything or their delivery will fall flat – though they are shy middle schoolers anyway so it probably won’t be academy award-winning. 😂
    Content is 60-70% the deciding factor in my experience. Then English ability (pronunciation/intonation). Delivery doesn’t matter too much unless you waaaaay overdo it OR they forget their speech/mess up every sentence. The best speeches have a point. Make sure the audience is supposed to get something out of it. Good speeches should make the audience think. Judges get tired of hearing the same “My dream is…” (unless it’s really unique) or club activity talk because really – who cares?

    Keep in mind this was my experience in Tokushima. As others mentioned, a lot depends on what kind of judges you have. Good luck to you and your student 🙂

22. Some are written by teachers some aren’t. When I judge speeches I usually can tell which ones are not written by the student

23. What? The content should be the student’s. The corrections should be done by the ALT.

    There are rarely junior high school students who do not enlist the help of the ALT, and if they do not it’s likely because either they have a lot of pride and above-average English knowledge, their parents have a lot of pride, or they have an ALT whose English comprehension is low, and they know this.

    The first and second examples “can’t be helped”, and the third example shouldn’t happen, but as the requirements for being an ALT sink lower and lower, there will be students who understand that their ALT’s first language is obviously not English.

    “Hey, young people! Do you have a BA and the ability to breathe? Then do we have a job for you!”

24. I have my students write the speech in Japanese then my JLt would translate, then my co-alt and I translates.

25. My first year of speech contest, my JTE really stressed that the student should write the speech on his own, and that I was only allowed to fix tiny things, and prompt him to correct the essay on his own using the textbook. It was a very long and slow process, but the result was a speech that was almost totally written and edited by the student.

    So imagine my surprise, sitting in the BOE and listening to other ALTs talking about writing their student’s speeches for them, translating directly from Japanese, etc. I ended up telling my JTE about it and he was kinda shocked because student’s are *supposed* to write it themselves.

    After all that, a cellphone went off twice during my student’s performance and points were deducted because he stopped while the person turned off the phone. AND IF THAT WASN’T BAD ENOUGH someone started a rumour that it was his grandmother’s phone that went off (I guess to save face?) when it wasn’t.

    I just remember him crying and feeling so bad that other students could write such advanced speeches like that *when they just can’t*.

26. One year one of my students wrote her speech. I assisted her with writing it. She was good compare to her classmates. The next year the jte wanted the student to just recite what was in the English text book. This girl was good at understanding but not speaking.