Keen!
Check your score sheet and you will find two of your delivery scores in G.B.C. relate directly to confidence and enthusiasm (specifically nervousness and animation/enthusiasm). Furthermore, vocal clarity and eye contact are signs that you are confident and passionate about what you are talking about. Let's work on those in this class.
How confident do you feel in the G.B.C. test? How confident do you think you seem in the G.B.C. test?
Talk about confidence here. If the student is confident, great. But if they are not, then delve into why and what they fear.
Give them this speech:
Remember that the G.B.C. score breaks down into three major parts: communication, delivery and language skills. We worked on communication (logic, reasoning etc.) first because you can make the most improvement the fastest there. We'll go on to talk about language skills later in the course. This section has been on delivery. Delivery is all about how you speak, not what you say. This is the last lesson on delivery, and we're going to go over the following:
- confidence; &
- enthusiasm.
These are the most difficult aspects of delivery to improve. They relate directly to the nervousness and eye contact parts of your score, but more generally to how you speak. However, if you are truly nervous, it can be hard to fake confidence. Likewise, enthusiasm can be really hard to fake if you don't deeply understand what you are saying. We'll talk more about that later.
NOTE:
- You should use video for this class, since we are evaluating eye contact. Some students may be uncomfortable with this.
- This may require some acting on the part of the student. This may not be reflective of their personality. Make it clear that if they want to score well, they may have to fake it to some degree for the duration of the interview, but they don't need to pretend that everything is awesome.
Your teacher is going to ask you a couple of questions. Please answer them as best you can.
Ask your student these two questions:
- What is the best thing that has happened to you in your lifetime?
- Have you ever been really, truly terrified in your lifetime? What happened?
If their delivery is flat and unenthusiastic, point it out. Don't be too harsh, but be frank. Tell them if you think it sounds like it was a great or most terrifying event. Save the specific feedback for the language section.
Delivery is something you need to work on to improve. It's not something that you can make perfect from one lesson. Your teacher will give some advice on the following, then you can practice:
- enthusiasm;
- eye contact; and
- confidence.
Now let's practice.
Work through these points with your student. Ask for their opinion on each and then if they don't get it, explain the key criteria as per the following:
- Enthusiasm: How do you show enthusiasm? Enthusiasm is shown by word choice and intonation. If you don't have the vocabulary, then it's tough, but things aren't good, they are marvelous! fantastic! wonderful! or amazing! Furthermore, stress and intonation will show enthusiasm. Take the student's answers from the warm up and show them how to improve it with better words and more intonation. Then get them to practice. Record this for them to work from after class.
Note: Japanese people (due to the constraints of the Japanese language—not great for synonyms) often feel like English speakers exaggerate. Make sure that when you make this vocab point, you make it clear that native speakers don't literally believe that they are starving when they are very hungry, but that it is used in a metaphorical sense. They can reject that notion, and be an uninteresting English speaker, or embrace it and change their attitude when they speak English (which is essential). - Eye contact: This is tough online (especially if your student prefers not to use video). Get them to work at looking at the camera on the PC or at your image on their screen. Looking at the camera is good practice for teleconferences, and helps the person you are speaking to feel more engaged. Looking at your image is better practice for them. Either way, they should not be looking anywhere else as they speak. This is something that is easy to fake for 20 minutes, no matter how uncomfortable they feel, and if they are not getting a 3 for this, then they need to work at it.
- Confidence & nervousness: If ever there was a more nebulous aspect of speaking a language, it was this! (Don't say that in class.) This really is a combo of minimising non-word sounds, making eye contact and speaking with purpose and strongly. A real key is to get your student to slow down and speak more deliberately. If they speak with good rhythm and a measured pace, they seem thoughtful and confident. In the practice, be careful of their speed. A good point to make is remind them of the pace at which someone like Obama speaks: slow and steady. Point out that for an added bonus, they should make fewer mistakes if they slow down.
FYI—the scores that we are targeting here are: displayed nervousness; eye contact was sporadic; and did not show enthusiasm/animation.
Super important: At some point in the test they should love something and hate something. This will give them the chance to be enthusiastic about things and show off that aspect of their skills. For example, "I love/hate my job" etc.
Try putting it all together with these G.B.C. questions:
- If you could choose any location for a future trip, where would you go and why?
- Are you satisfied with the Japanese government's policy towards its Asian neighbours?
- Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Japan's economy?