A Short Letter Home: Here comes da judge

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Here comes da judge

Well, the venture is winding down, but there's still time for new experiences. Tonight I got to be a judge for the Foreign Language Department's speaking competition. This is one of those "honors" that our co-workers had warned us about, along with things like being asked to perform at talent shows and being offered bai jiu toasts at banquets. Unlike the other honors, however, we had never been asked to judge anything until this past month. There were two preliminary rounds of speeches and Yau Neih got tagged to judge both. Me, I had to miss the previous bouts and I think the only reason I was asked this time was that the other foreign teachers had said that they were unavailable. Ah, well. I had plenty of experience being a second (or was that third?) stringer back in junior high basketball, so I was glad to serve. Glad and slightly nervous.

I have never been a judge of anything before, but I figured I could do a passable job of it. On one hand I can be incredibly nitpicky, so I was sure I could critique the speeches and speakers. On the other hand, I realized that the primary goal was to encourage language learning, so I could keep my inner critic on a leash and not be too harsh. Besides, the other judges could always balance me out. What I didn't realize was that this was a realtime event. I had try to listen to the speeches, make my evaluation and scribble it down by the time the next speech started. There was no time to reflect on it all, much less rewind the speech to catch a segment again. If I failed to catch something, it was gone.

Unfortunately, it took me time to adjust to the process, as well as to get a feel for the point system. Theoretically, the point spread went from zero to 1.0. In actuality, the scores centered around .8 or so. In my case, I started with .6 being the basic assigned score for passable work, and tried to judge speeches along a 4 point spread. After the confusion of the first few speeches, however, I fell back to more of a three point system and the low number crept up to .7 by the end. I wished I could have went back and re-evaluated the initial contestants, but of course, I couldn't. Unfortunately, the first speeches were all given by non-English majors, who all got lower scores. Hopefully they took it in stride and haven't developed a loathing for the snooty Foreign Language Department.

Another surprise was my attempt to be impartial. I figured that I could be objective and all that, but I discovered that it took some effort. "Love covers a multitude of sins," as the saying goes and I was really tempted to cut my favorite students some slack. Well, really, I wanted to cut all of the students some slack. But then for fear of partiality, I'd be tempted to start getting critical. In the end I wished I could have just skipped the whole judging thing and taken all the students out for ice cream or something. Ah, well, at least it's unlikely that I'll have to do that ever again.