In this episode, Noriko and Michael talk about the elephant in the room. This idiom, “the elephant in the room,” means a topic that is something we should talk about but, nobody is willing to talk about, because they are little uncomfortable talking about it. The elephant that we are going to talk about in this episode is competition. We also talk about standardized testing; both the importance of it, and in some cases, why it may be unnecessary. We also chat about how someone’s test score can improved significantly when they focus more on speaking and using English than focusing on practicing for the test. We hope you enjoy this episode and look forward to hearing your comments!