No, we weren’t surprised. We always listen carefully to all the other kids and we felt, this year was the first time, that Luke was one of the few kids with a good performance and good pronunciation. We felt very confident.

I took notes after every practice with an English teacher. We also watched videos from older contests and tried to improve every day. To keep Luke’s motivation up, after every successful practice we rewarded him with his favorite ice-cream.

Yes. We bought him the LEGO pirate ship he wanted for so long. I think, the pirate ship also boosted his motivation during practice.

I think it was a little stressful at times, but we both wanted to win and improve our English. I feel it even brought us closer together and we enjoy spending time with each other.

I never thought that Molly would win in her group. I thought that Molly might win a consolation prize; but the fact that she won in her group surprised me so much.

Because we did not practice as much as last year, it felt totally unexpected and I was completely surprised. I couldn’t really believe what had happened, but as I talked with Miss Hiroe later, I started crying.

Usually, I am not the type to give rewards. Instead, I prefer to spend time with my child like I do every day, so there were no rewards for practicing. We just listened to the CD of the teacher reciting the speech over and over again and then practiced a lot. To be honest, I feel a little bit bad for scolding Molly at times.

As I already mentioned before, I am not a big fan of giving rewards. However, participating in such a big and important speech contest made the day very special for us. Therefore, we had sushi at home in the evening.

As I told my friends, no one was surprised at all. All of them said things like: “Of course Molly won!” or “I knew it!”; and they cheered for Molly the whole time and supported us.