Real Talk is a special activity that has been taking place at Nanmo BC for many years. What is Real Talk? I was quite interested in this activity when I initially heard about it from the senior students. Following the teachers’ introductions, I thought it was a really worthwhile activity that was not only entertaining but also beneficial to our English spoken communication. Real Talk usually lasts for almost the entire school year, and during that time, we must speak English during BC lessons. All of the students at Nanmo are divided into groups, each of which is named after a different ice hockey team from Canada. Their team would lose one point every time the teacher detected the student speaking Chinese. On the contrary, if the students are actively speaking English during class time or even outside of class during Real Talk time, teachers may give them a bonus. The total score of the group is counted every month. Every month, the group’s overall score is calculated. The highest-scoring group will be rewarded with milk tea or a pizza lunch, while the lowest-scoring group will get a punishment. They may be required to do some performances in front of each team during our Real Talk classes. Every month, we will have a period of cle/clc class time for the Real Talk teams to get together and do the summary of this month. We will praise who gets the highest score and which students need to be encouraged to speak more. It is also the time that we can watch the members of the group with the lowest score last month come to the class to perform.
Shortly after we entered Nanmo, we participated in Real Talk. It was my first time studying in an English-speaking environment, therefore, I found sometimes it was very hard for me to express everything I want to my classmates and teachers totally in English. However, I never feel afraid to make mistakes. Despite the fact that I couldn’t speak properly at the time, my teachers and students were patient in listening to me and were always willing to correct my unusual colloquial idioms. This helped me a great deal. Through the whole years ’efforts, my Spoken Language teacher gave me a comment on my final report card that said my oral speaking skills had improved a lot, it was much better than the time I first entered Nanmo. In the following summer vacation, I got a band 6 in the IELTS speaking test. I was very satisfied with this since I could not answer questions fluently in spoken English a year ago. This was the gift that Real Talk had given to me. Now that I am in grade 12, I still find Real Talk to be beneficial in encouraging me to speak English more. Our team took first place out of all the teams last month, and I received the second highest score in our group. I am so excited and looking forward to the pizza lunch next week.