How was your week? I had a nice weekend. I saw a movie, called Love and Mercy which is a biopic of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, one of my favourite bands. It was really good. Of course the music in the movie was great but it was also a really interesting story well acted. Check it out in the cinema now or when it comes out on DVD.

Tomorrow, Alan, Sachiyo and I will have a meeting to decide which students will be selected to take part in the speech contest. I think I’ve written before about this but it’s important to say again. We do a speech homework for all of our PLS students in the second year and above. It’s a lot of planning and work for us and the reason we do it is so that our students can all learn English. They have the chance to practice public speaking skills, pronunciation, new vocabulary. Also, it’s a chance for everyone to tell their opinion about something important to them. We have offered speech coaching to all students this year too after it proved helpful last year. Many students came in earlier this week and I was glad to help and to see motivated, eager students. Finally, every student performs their speech in front of their parents and our upcoming open classes. The speech contest is a bonus for some students, a lucky extra but not the central reason for doing this homework.

We always try very hard to be fair and pick the best students. We video everyone so we can be objective and we can compare students who we don’t teach. Some students will have worked hard and been chosen to go the speech contest. Congratulations to you all. Another group of students will have not worked so hard and won’t be chosen. I would tell those students to look at their peers who have been chosen as a guide of what to do for next year. There’s another group who have really tried hard with their speech but won’t get chosen. It might be disappointing for some of those students. I want to tell those students that if they’ve done the best they could then the shouldn’t be disappointed or feel bad. Your best this year won’t the same as your best next year and you’ll have other chances. Anything worth doing in life requires lots of hard work and has no guarantee of success. You should still try hard because if you don’t then you’ll definitely fail.

Anyway, thank you to all the students doing speeches this year. I’m really impressed with the general quality and the amount of effort everyone is putting in. If you’ve learnt English by doing this, then you’ve already won, regardless of the speech contest.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week.

Kevin

今週はいかがお過ごしですか？私は週末にLove and Mercyという映画を見てきました。この映画は私の好きなバンド、Beach Boysというバンドのブライアン・ウィルソンの伝記の映画です。とてもいい映画でしたよ。音楽もさることながら内容も素晴らしいものでした。よければまたチェックしてみて下さい。