Caveat: Giving Speeches

I'm teaching a lot of debate classes, these days: more, by almost an order of magnitude, relative to previous terms at Karma. And I make video of all my students' speeches. And I evaluate the speeches and give scores. This is a laborious process, and part of why I'm feeling overwhelmed with work. But I have decided it's a really great way to get middle schoolers actually talking in English class. The combination of natural adolescent reticence on the one hand combined with the horrifying discomfort of speaking a foreign language they don't feel confident with, on the other, means that getting middle school English students to actually talk is about as easy as pulling teeth from a chicken. But if you turn on a video camera and tell them it's a test, they'll stand up at the podium, shaking and quaking, and give their damnedest. It's a bit coercive, relative to my most preferred methods, but overall I'm pleased with how well it works.

Here's one of my favorite classes, giving some speeches on the debate proposition: "Immigration to South Korea should be encouraged." They complained that this topic was difficult, but they all said it was interesting, too.

As a bonus, this video has a complex connection to an earlier blog post: I'll have to give a door prize if anyone actually identifies the connection. I don't know if I have any blog readers loyal or attentive enough to do this. So this is a kind of stealth-test.

Comments

[Peter J.]

You did the same debate a bit over a year ago:

http://raggedsign.blogs.com/caveatdumptruck/2011/12/caveat-immigration-debate.html

This is not a "complex connection", though. More an obvious and overt one. So I guess that's not it.

[Peter J.]

After watching more of the video, I think it must be:

http://raggedsign.blogs.com/caveatdumptruck/2012/12/caveat-birthrates-and-immigration.html

The students raised the same issues you did in that post. The problem is that this connection is still not particularly complex, I think!

[Peter J.]

My third and final guess, which I'm sure is right:

http://raggedsign.blogs.com/caveatdumptruck/2013/01/caveat-the-drama-of-the-white-down-feather.html

Timeframes in the Video
17:20-21:20 -- "Shy But Intelligent Girl" is speaking with lots of pausing and hesitation [due to what's happening off-camera(?)]. The speech is hard to follow and leads one's mind to wander, even in the case when one is paid to pay attention, resulting in:
17:20-21:20 -- [Off-camera] -- The 'White Down Feather Drama' is occurring (I speculate), leading the naturally-hesitant speaker to hesitate even more, and make a two of three minute speech into a four-minute speech.
21:20-21:30 -- You quoted yourself in the other blogpost as saying "Put the scissors away, please". Whether you said this off-camera, I don't know. We -do- hear you say this in the video: "Please be quiet and stop playing with the scissors". That is 21:20-21:25. (That is also what hit me as the "complex connection"). An unseen girl meekly but quickly replies, "okay". We hear some unidentified noise that sounds perhaps like a "North Face" jackets being rubbed. We hear you say "thank you".

Further proof: the off-camera story is in a blogpost dated January 30th, presumably the day it happened. The video title includes the same date!

Therefore: This must be it.

The only question remaining is as to the identities of Oblivious Boy, Fashionable Girl, and Confident-and-Sociable Girl. I guess the boy must be the first speaker, who does look like a young prototype of a K-Pop idol. I won't hazard to guess on the others.

[jaredway]

My friend Peter J. is hereby declared the winner (and sole participant) in this little contest! We'll go out to lunch tomorrow maybe. Thanks Peter. Happy Lunar New Year.