▲ Mr. Dyck with all the homeroom models during the Real Talk Fashion Show launch assembly
Photographer: Ms. Fortin
Striking news! Last Friday, while wearing a full suit made from newspaper, a male student from 10A proposed to another male classmate in front of the entire school! Not only did he propose, but he got down on one knee to do it! It was not a drama but a real event happening in our school. What made them enact this drama and risk damaging their reputations? The truth is, they were working so hard to earn a bonus card from their BC teachers during the Real Talk assembly. These bonus cards were to highlight the coming Real Talk competition!
Real Talk is an oral English competition designed to arouse students’ enthusiasm in speaking more English. It is aimed at helping individuals improve in pronunciation, expression, grammar as well as fluency in oral English. During the competition, students are required to speak English exclusively throughout the day (except for during Chinese classes and lunch break). Students are divided based on their homerooms, the group they are most familiar with in the school. Homeroom teams enable students to show better team coherence with teammates and enhance the trust and respect between individuals in the classroom.
There are a few differences that distinguish this year’s Real Talk from previous years. First of all, we have a new system to count for the loss and gains of the cards. The new system was created by Mr. Ritchot. Students no longer have only three cards to lose a day. Instead, the number of cards they can lose is infinite. This will efficiently help to avoid the situation where students can speak Chinese whenever they want after losing all three cards. Moreover, the number of bonus cards for teachers is also limited. Every BC teacher only has 3 bonus cards per day so students need to work hard and speak more English to show their teachers that they are the right one to give the bonus cards to. Last but not the least, students are able to speak Chinese during lunch break. I still remembered last year, our classroom was often deadly quiet during lunch break. In order not to lose any card during lunch break, most of us chose to keep quiet. This didn’t really help us improve our oral English. The time for English rearranged this year is more reasonable and gives us chance to communicate with each other in our mother language.
All in all, if you don’t want to lose this game and sing or dance a song of shame, start speaking English now!
▲ Brady from 10A modeling his newspaper costume