I can imagine what some of you are thinking; that's impossible. Truth be told, you won't find this season listed on the official Korean calendar; its not technically on any calendar that i know of, however, we've entered a new season here in Korea; the unofficial "speech contest" season. It falls directly before the start of the school term after summer break, and lasts until sometime just after Christmas. This is the time where teachers cringe, groan, and complain, because on top of us teaching children how to learn basic (or in my case, somewhat advanced) english, we also have to squeeze in speech practicing, and making sure that the kids have "their" speeches memorized.
Now, normally, I would think that a little memorizing would do the children some good. However, the speeches that these kids memorize are such a scam, that the kids are 1) forced into memorizing the speeches by their parents, 2) don't actually write their speeches, native english teachers do, and 3) Korean english teachers tell the children to do excessive gestures and word emphasis that make the poor children look like robots.
So why would you force your child to participate in a speech contest, when its not the parents who get anything out of it? Ahhh, but that's where your wrong. At my institutes annual speech contest, the children (read:parents) can win as much as a full years tuition for winning the grand prize, along with smaller prizes such as a month's tuition, book certificates, etc. For the children, they get almost nothing out of it, except their parents pushing their behinds to memorize it better and better. The parents also get bragging privileges out of this; and in Korea, that's almost worth the years tuition.
For the institutes, especially the regional and district sponsored speech contests, institutes will endlessly spend hours helping their kids memorize and practice and practice, because one winner at any of the speech contest winners could mean as many as a dozen new students joining your institutes based solely on the winning child being from your institute. And for my institute, which advertises itself as specializing in "speaking" (not grammar, or writing, as other do) we're usually under heavy pressure to make sure that our best students get ample opportunity to memorize, by giving them less homework (while still expecting them to keep up their levels of competency)...
It's fun times here in Korea right now, especially for English teachers. We somewhat hate this season, but its something that comes with the job...did I mention lately that i love my job....?
God Bless,
me