A Japanese practice session in support of a member
We held a special event conducted in Japanese for the first time in the club's hitory. This was because we wanted to support a member who is going to compete in the Japaense Evaluation Contest representing the other club he belongs to.
One of our experienced member, Mit, belongs to a French-language club based in Tokyo and will be competing in the Division contest, the third round in a contest cycle of club, area, division, and district. Mit wanted us to provide feedback to his Japanese evaluation speech, three of us and another from Nishinomiya TGIF, our sponsor club, joined this practice session. We all watched videos of Japanese speeches and commented on Mit's evaluation speeches and the speeches he evaluated. The speeches we used this time were not as well made as the one we used at the Evaluation Practice Session on October 11 and the one used for the Evaluator Practice Session on November 10, and we all found it harder to evaluate. When the message is clear and the structure is organized, it is easy to spot some things that were not working and come up with a solution, but when the message is not as clear, it is harder because we don't know how to fix it. In a sense, though, it served as a great opportunity to try evaluating a speech that is not as beautifully constructed.
The Division Evaluation Contest is scheduled for November 23. We wish Mit all the best!!
On another note, we had with us Ayako, who just joined us in August, and she proved to be a great evaluator. She demonstrated her superb skills in analyzing a speech and we all were happily surprised with her skills. We look forward to her debut as an evaluator in one of our future meetings pretty soon!