Huatan JHS English Essay Contest

     On April 18, 2016, I was invited to be a judge at a school-wide English Essay Contest at Changhua County's Huatan Junior High School. We were driven there by the textbook publisher that I have been freelancing for. They supply the EFL textbooks for this school. The essay contest was enrichment for the schools English language program

      The children representing their classes in the sixth and seventh grade had, in most cases, appropriated essays to read in the contest; few had written their own. Furthermore, Only one of the eighteen participants read without looking at her prepared text. I was teamed with two Taiwanese English-language teachers from their school, without having any prior consultation or given ground rules. I merly sat down, was handed two lists of students from each grade, and had to rank them any way I saw fit.

 I judged the students for time (three minute limit), memorization, pronunciation, intonation, and body language. I have no idea if my judgments were considered in the choice of contest winners. I did make note of  which students I considered to be the best, second best, and third with my numeral value of each category, twenty each, totaling one hundred points. 

     I respect the teachers at Huatan JHS for going out of their way to encourage their English language learners with a contest and making it low stress by allowing the students to read the essay and not memorize. I do not know how much time the children were given for preparation.

     The students enjoyed reading and were generally relaxed despite the presence of a video camera, photography, and a rare school visit by a foreign teacher, yours truly. 

     I spoke with some of the students afterwards and told them how I admired them for the work they had done. I mentioned that few students in American schools would have the nerve or ability to read essays in Mandarin or any language other than English; that they should be proud of themselves for doing such nice work.