One of my more unusual jobs this week was acting as an adjudicator at the finals of a High School Debating Competition. That's debating in English. This was my first time to be involved, but apparently it's now in its sixth year, and getting to be quite a big and successful event, hotly contested by all the leading schools in the Beijing area.
I hadn't been exactly brimming with optimism or excitement about this beforehand. Precious few of the University students I've encountered here have attained a real fluency in English, and just about none of them have got the slightest idea how to debate. And I've had to sit through far too many University "English Speaking Contests" in the past (heck, I got roped into judging one of these within days of arriving in China on my first trip, all the way back in 1994 - I suppose that must have been my first ever paying gig here). Strangulated pronunciation, sing-song intonation, and - sometimes - melodramatic excesses of emotion are standard. As is the use of 'backing tracks' of lush orchestral music. I suffer particularly vivid, painful memories - acid flashbacks - of a young woman hyper-emoting "Oh, Captain, my Captain!" while plangent music (I think it might well have been Ravel's Pavane pour un enfant défunte, but memory fails me on this point now) gushed out of her ghetto-blaster. She was, in fact, one of the best participants in that particular freakshow, but it was still one of those jarring "We're not in Kansas any more!" moments of cultural dissonance.
Well, I had been half-fearing more of the same on Wednesday; but I was very pleasantly surprised. No, the quality of debate was not high, and there was very little humour (and absolutely no lateral thinking) on display, but the standard was certainly not abysmal either - and a few of the better rounds actually kicked off into some spirited back-and-forth exchanges. It was the level of their English, however, that really impressed me. Even the ones most overwhelmed by their nerves managed to make a reasonable showing. The stars of the event appeared to have attained native speaker fluency (By the age of 16! It makes you sick, doesn't it?!).
It was a very diverting afternoon. And one that makes me think that perhaps Chinese education - at least in a handful of 'key schools' (almost all of the schools represented in this grand final were special 'experimental' schools, or schools attached to teaching universities) - is finally starting to make some progress.
These were a great bunch of kids, and I hope I may meet some of them again one day. I have something in mind by way of an extra 'prize' for them, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to pull it off........
2 comments:
You ever think their fluency might not be an result of the high school education? I mean..one of my cousins is participating in some middle school english speaking contest right now, but she was born and raised in the U.S before her parents send her back to Beijing two years ago..
Yes, some of the best of them have almost certainly spent time overseas - but I doubt if it's possible that all of them can have done so.
They probably have a good language environment at home, though: parents who are fairly fluent in English and who use it in the home.
I hope that at least some of their achievement can be credited to improvements in teaching methodology.
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