By Patrick Bray
DLIFLC Public Affairs
Service members studying Mandarin Chinese at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, Presidio of Monterey, participated in the 40th Annual Mandarin Speech Contest in San Francisco April 26, with 28 DLIFLC students winning awards. (Photo by Patrick Bray, DLIFLC Public Affairs)
MONTEREY, Calif. – Service members studying Mandarin Chinese at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, Presidio of Monterey, participated in the 40th Annual Mandarin Speech Contest in San Francisco April 26, with 28 DLIFLC students winning awards.
About 500 Mandarin Chinese students from Northern California universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, San Francisco State and the University of California – Davis competed in the contest.
Teachers in DLIFLC’s Chinese department encourage their students to participate in the annual contest, which many of them see as a measure of both faculty and student success, according to Patrick Lin, a lead faculty member at DLIFLC Asian School I.
“Every year we take this contest as a driving force to enhance our students’ language proficiency,” said Lin. “This requires students to think in their new language.”
Students deliver a three to five-minute speech, which they wrote, memorized and delivered on their own, on any appropriate topic the student chose to speak on, appropriate to his or her level of training.
Airman 1st Class Naomi Woods won first place for her speech in Mandarin about joining the U.S. Air Force to study at the institute and not letting her mother down.
“I spoke about how important it was for me to come here and learn Chinese and be good at it and make my mom proud because she did not have the same opportunities that I had,” said Woods.
Airman 1st Class Justin Rodgers won second place for his speech about teaching English as a second language to bilingual preschool students and what he did to help them learn and have fun.
“Though I didn’t know it at the time, that would influence my learning Chinese here at DLI,” said Rodgers.
The day-long competition, the largest of its kind in the United States, is sponsored by the Chinese Language Teachers Association of California with the purpose of fostering good language skills in Mandarin.
Established in 1962, CLTAC, is a nonpolitical, nonprofit educational and professional organization that seeks to promote the study, teaching and research of the Chinese language and culture and provides a platform for Chinese instructors to share and exchange teaching experience, ideas and information. The annual speech contest rewards excellence in speaking and comprehension.
