For those of you who will be accepted to JET and have just arrived to Japan and your schools, this will be the first project you will likely be handed: the regional English Recitation Contest.

Now, ALT’s are not in charge of this contest, but it is expected that we show up to practices and help guide the students in their efforts to memorize and pronounce a 2-3 page English piece. There are 20-minute practices before school, 10-minute practices during hiruyasumi, and hour-long practices afterschool. So we are expected to put in a fair bit of effort to help whichever kids are chosen to rise to the occasion.

After about a month of intense and often harried practices, we all load up with the supervising teacher and head to the area contest, allowing students to compete on a local level to decide the best deserving speakers, to move on to the prefectural-wide competition.

Last year we took five students to the massive(ish) Amakusa regional contest and the results were pretty good!! Our first-year pair and our second year got awards though they didn’t move to the next round, but our third-years got first place and went to the prefectural competition a month later. If this happens you’ll need to keep helping them with their delivery; otherwise, you’re free. The only downside for some of us that had students move on is that for the prefectural our schools didn’t even invite us to attend! We were frustrated by this because we do want to show our support for the kids at any opportunity. Nonetheless though, I was incredibly proud of them. All of the ALT’s wanted the best for their kids but it’s of course a competition. If only all of the kids could move on, then we’d have a real gigantic competition on our hands! And a greater sense of improvement. All of the kids make great improvements over time, so it’s an all-around beneficial exercise for everyone, including the teachers!