Preparing for the Interactive Forum

Recently, I have been asked by my Junior High School that I help students prepare for the upcoming Interactive Forum. For those that do not know, an Interactive Forum is basically a competition based on English conversation, and getting students to talk in English as much as possible for a set period of time, while judges assess how each participant did.

Considering that I was working at elementary schools in Kamisu, this is the first time that I've been involved in an Interactive Forum in some capacity. Despite the company doing a quick training session at a recent ALT meeting, I've kind of been going on the fly in helping students prepare for the upcoming competition. Fortunately, there are students that have actually been involved in the forum last year, so because they have a pretty good grasp of how things go down, I'm usually just trying to give pointers on not letting awkward silences happen, and just jump in at any time and just ask a question.
However, for 3rd Grade students, they are required to talk about their town - except it's not as clear cut as I thought initially. Apparently Chikusei is an amalgamation of several, smaller towns and because of that, they can't talk about Chikusei. They have to talk about their town where their junior high school is located. The thing is, according to the students and teachers, there is absolutely nothing of any real interest in the area - nothing for tourists to see at all. Consequently, this puts them at a major disadvantage. What I've tried to do, in order to compensate for the lack of variety in the town, is to explain to the students to try and talk as much as possible about the few things that are in the town. For example, there's a library, I try to get them to talk about why they go to the library, how often they go to the library, and what kind of books the like. By doing this, I'm hoping this helps them to just keep talking, despite the lack of things that are in the area. They seem to understand the idea, especially when we're practicing, although I occasionally need to prompt them to ask questions when there's that awkward silence.

Interestingly enough, I have also been invited to judge an Interactive Forum next month, together with a fellow ALT. This will be interesting to see how this turns out, as it is actually happening at a time I'm supposed to be at school. I guess we'll see how it goes - and hopefully, my students will do well.