Last week I was asked to be a judge in the speech contest final on Friday. I cordially agreed, expecting all the foreign staff as a whole to be part of the judging panel. But no, it was only myself and Lesley [+ Shay]. Whether the others had even been asked I don't know, but I felt a little disheartened by the lack of other foreign teachers. Last year the whole group had been asked and everyone had agreed to participate. However, this year for me, there was an improvement. I was actually judging (giving marks out of 100), as opposed to deciding a "best English speaking manners" prize. Lesley was the "Question Master", which involved reading out a question from a list provided.
The main topic that everybody had to speak on was "I love China". Then they'd obviously drawn straws before hand (at least a day) for an impromptu speech topic, and lastly an aptly written (by the organizers or a teacher … a Chinese person) question related to the impromptu topic spoken out via wireless microphone by the lovely Lesley.
The marking process (for me) was less than fair. After each all three sections of each entrant were finished, you write down your mark (singular) on a bit of paper, fold it, and then passed down the line of judges to be summed and then averaged by the student helpers. Their mark was then announced after the conclusion of the next entrant. This means firstly that the judges have no concept of what marks to give for the first entrant and therefore usually give a lower mark than is maybe deserved, and secondly judges are unable to adjust marks based on other peoples performances. So the winner isn't necessarily the best candidate.
Other than this, the judges were given a marking guideline of between 85 – 98.5%, and were advised that we were allowed to use upto 2 decimal points. Personally I don't think it's humanly possible to rate on that level of accuracy. For the averaging I totally understand using 2dp as a guide. As for the range, I think having a lower limit is fine, it means that student egos and emotions will remain intact and gives a useful guide for the all the judges and acts as a way to limit bias for particular students that the judges know and like, and know and dislike. As for the higher limit, I'm not convinced that this was really needed, as this was the final.
A musical interlude between first year contestants and the second year contestants, allowed people (such as myself) to nip off to the toilet. They were of course singing in English, and the second act (singing a soppy love song) included a girl come on to dance briefly with him and then leaving, causing many laugh and claps.
As for the good things about the competition, as I understand, there is a large student organizational element to it, which obviously provides useful experience, and lest we not forget, the enormous benefit even participating in a competition like this, performing in front of a large crowd on a well lit stage, being able to overcome nerves and the satisfaction this provides even if the particular student doesn't win.
I was trying to rack myself of things like this at Imperial, but the only things that came to mind were professional competitions sponsored by companies. On a more local scale, there were sports matches, and competitions and performances within union clubs/societies themselves. There was little by way of departmental encouraged competitions. I think this will be because the student union takes this role mainly (i.e. completely student arranged and organized) and if you want to participate in a competition relating to you degree you go off and enter a professionally sponsored and organized one. So for me, there is no direct mapping of this sort of activity here and back home.
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