How to judge an English contest in China...

This past Saturday we were invited (well, we didn't really have a choice) to be guest judges at an English competition being held on our campus. It was sponsored by CCTV, and the 20 winning finalists will move on to the next round, with other folks from Shandgong province. Some of the participants were Cecilia's kids; it was only open to Chinese students, though there was one Korean girl there, and she did a pretty good job. Rory teaches all Koreans, and I teach the little littles, so these were relatively new faces to us, save for the folks who came to receive our input a few nights earlier in the week. We walked into the auditorium, and it was huge. I guess it comes as no surprise, everything on our campus is huge. The stage was really ornately decorated with these giant lotus flowers, a bunch of random (fake) foliage and sparkly orbs everywhere. It was really a sight to see. So we took our seats in the front row--the judging area--next to Cecilia, the minister of our school and a few other Chinese English teachers (including the two who had provided the counterproductive "help" at our first practice session).

Each participant was to read a numbered passage from a book; we each had a copy of the book, and they all read/performed in order, so already it was a pretty easy gig. There were also a series of questions in the front of the book; we had to choose (according to skill level) a question to ask the students for the "communication" portion of the contest. We had little score sheets with each contestant's number on it, along with a 100 point breakdown: grammer (yes, spelled incorrectly), fluency, tonation, performance, general, communication and maybe a few other things. But it all added up to 100.

Cecilia decided (for us) that we were going to ask the questions, because she wanted the students to get a chance to hear the dialects of the other two foreign teachers. Sure, sounds logical, but it was pretty clear that she was just bullshitting us because she didn't want to ask questions. Whatever. We were fine with asking questions. So Rory and I rotated. The kids would finish their passages and we would ask: "do you like movies?" The answer was always "yes" or "no", and then we'd follow up with "why [not]?" We had 50-something kids reading passages, and 90% of the time, when we would ask them the "why[not]?" part of the question, they would answer that it was either "boring" or "interesting". So finally, when Rory asked a girl why she liked birds, she answered "because birds are free," and I started clapping really loudly, like--about time, people. Early in the competition, I asked a girl what day of the week it was, and she said "it's March 24." When I tried to get her to say the days of the week--prepping her with "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...no? Okay..."--she started crying. So I decided I didn't want to make any more kids cry. So simple(r) questions were the name of the game.

And though Cecilia had bowed out of the questions portion of the contest, she certainly made her presence known anyway. As each student was reading into the microphone, in front of his/her peers, she would make all of these pantomimic gestures; waving her hands in the air--to encourage them to slow down or speed up or smile or dance or something--trying to make eye contact with these kids who were two seconds shy of peeing their pants. It was really annoying and distracting to us, so I can only imagine what she looked like from a Chinese teenager's perspective. And she kept telling us, "No, don't ask that question--they don't know what cartoons are...", even though the five (younger) students before them knew exactly what cartoons are--they're interesting.

There were some contestants who were a little too confident, too, telling us (before they even started reading) "I think I will winner of this contest." Nope. There was actually one girl who said it and then delivered the best performance of the night (in my humble opinion). She had been at our practice session, and she actually listened to our comments, so that when she got to the word "interviewer" (difficult for Asians, who don't have a "v"), she totally nailed it. I gave her the highest points.

We knew that there was going to be a dance routine, because we had seen the girls rehearsing before the shindig started. So these 5 awkward Chinese girls got on stage and danced to some song while the judges tallied the votes. We were just sitting there, taking it all in, filming a little bit of it, when Rebecca came up to us and said "the girls want you to sing the English song `Senorita' so that they can dance to it..." I knew that she was probably talking about that Justin Timberlake song, but instead I feigned ignorance, saying "we don't know that song, and `senorita' is actually a Spanish word...". So we thought we were off the hook, but right after the girls finished dancing, Rebecca came back to us and said "you should sing an English song with no music. Now." We didn't really have time to think, and at this point, we are up for any opportunity to win brownie points with the school, so we said okay. We walked onstage and stood in front of these high school kids who just wanted to hear some American Y107 music. So we sang "Step Inside" by the Hollies. It was really awkward and funny, and it was met with a tepid (okay, non-) response from the kids.

Next they announced the winners (in Chinese, so we still don't know who got to move to the next round of competition--they didn't make them come on stage or anything), and then the minister got onstage and gave a speech about something. I don't know what he was talking about, but he was enthusiastic. The competition was over, and we were greeted by a lot of firm handshakes and promises of a free meal in the future. I think that our colleagues loved that we sang a song, whether the kids did or not. So we decided that anytime we get up and sing in front of people, it goes over really well--we should have some standby songs under our belts just in case. It could mean a free meal.