English Interactive Forum and other things
The rainy season has started in Japan. The temperature is in the 80’s and the humidity is between 60 - 80%! It rains almost every day but the sun does shine early in the mornings.
I haven’t been too busy at work this week. On Monday, I didn’t teach any classes because the teachers had to hand back the end of the term tests. Every other day I have only taught two classes.
What has been keeping me a bit busy is practicing with the students for the English Interactive Forum (that is tomorrow!). My students have been practicing for almost a month now and we practice after school from 4:30 to 5:15 every school day. This week the students have requested to practice after lunch for fifteen minutes, too.
The topics for this year’s forum are “Self Introduction”, “My School”, and “My Family”. I am proud of how well my students are doing. Talking about school and family is a bit of a struggle but my students are doing well. They are also having a fun time. Most of the practice is filled with laughter as the students try to out do each other.
The English Interactive Forum is an English speaking competition between the schools in the area: Miho (Jana’s school), Kawachi (Andrea schools), Ami (the first school I taught at), Takaku (the school I taught at last year), and Asahi (where I teach now). The students are broken into group of three and they have to speak about each topic for five minutes. They must ask and answer questions about the topic.
They are judged on speaking ability, staying on task, grammar, the ability to ask questions, and a couple of other things, which I am sure I have forgotten. Last year Asahi sent one student on to the next level.
Today is our last practice and they compete tomorrow. I am going to go and cheer on my students.