NCFCA judging has taken up my last two days. The first session was a little rough in the mechanics, as I didn't think they gave me quite enough information to start. But very helpful people and by the afternoon session I was fine. I ran into people I knew there - and all people that I liked! How often does that happen?
True to form, by the second session I had a tweak I thought would make things better. I always know better. You should trust me on this. Before I go forward, this is the list for Impromptu. A student is given two choices, thinks about the word or phrase for two minutes, then speaks on it for up to five minutes. Rather than make you guess, I will announce first that I thought these phrases would be much less well known to this generation of highschoolers than the previous one, and certainly the one before that. Old guys like me picked these idioms. A younger person may have heard them and could likely work them out, but they would be more likely to be new. Worse, that would be uneven, which would be a disadvantage for someone who got a more dated phrase. Here are Thursday's paired phrases (I comment on the one the student chose):
Drop in the bucket vs Hands down (boy did not quite know the meaning of the phrase)
Go for it (boy knew the meaning) vs The best is yet to come
Glutton for punishment vs Take the cake (Girl told a charming story about taking a cake, but did not know the metaphor)
All bark and no bite vs Look at the bright side (girl studying to be vet tech, knew the phrase well)
Don't count your chickens before they hatch vs On the Edge (girl clearly intuited the meaning but didn't fully get it)
A hop, skip, and a jump vs. Sinking in a sea of self (girl got the general concept. The phrase is new to me)
Close shave vs. Put on your thinking cap (boy understood that it meant thinking about something rather than just acting)
Look at the unchosen ones. You might see why they were unchosen. I think I have heard myself use the phrase "glutton for punishment" in the last decade, but no one else. The others I doubt I have heard in decades, though they were common enough for a long time. And shave, chickens hatching, bucket? I only sort of get why they were chosen. They must have heard the key words and known them, but the full phrases are very much dated.
It's got to be a disadvantage for a student that has never seen the phrase versus one who has. When I was in highschool, you could count on everyone having run across those above. We might have still hung on for Now you're cooking with gas, or hitting the sauce, or cornball, eager beaver, head honcho - all recognisably unfair for today's students, but Tell it to Sweeney, handed you the mitten, let's blouse, or the bee's knees, though known to our grandparents and still appearing in older writing, would have been a tough impromptu phrase to draw even in 1970.
I'm not saying that today's competitive impromptu phrases should be drawn from Taylor Swift lyrics, but I think they need to be brought forward.
In contrast, in the other round I judged the students could choose between single words, and this worked much more equitably. Understatement, discretion, survive - all fair to anyone. I just have to mention here the older girl that chose curiosity. After her two minutes prep - no reference materials, just thinking and notes - she got up and told us that curiosity was ambiguous. She told us about Pandora, including her origin, and her box and the consequences in that myth; moved to The Magician's Nephew, setting and summarising the scene in Charn, including the argument and the entire poem on the bell verbatim, and the consequences of that; then doubled back and told us about Dr. Jerome Lejeune, who discovered that Down's Syndrome was the result of a genetic abnormality and identifying it, clearly a good result of curiosty. All in five minutes. I probably shouldn't give her name, but I will remember it and be looking for that one in the news going forward. Blew me away, as we might have said a few years ago.
1 comment:
That's no malarkey!
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