By Siyi (Lois) Gao
DLIFLC Asian School I
Sixty-eight Mandarin Chinese language students at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center participated in the 42nd Annual Mandarin Speech contest in San Francisco April 22, with 31 DLI students winning awards. (Photo by Siyi (Lois) Gao, DLIFLC Asian School I)
SAN FRANCISCO – Sixty-eight Mandarin Chinese language students at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center participated in the 42nd Annual Mandarin Speech contest in San Francisco April 22, with 31 DLI students winning awards.
This year, 415 registered contestants from 38 schools and universities in California participated in this contest, in which the DLIFLC students competed with students from U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Davis, U.C. Irvine, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and many others. According to the event organizer, the Chinese Language Teachers Association of California, DLIFLC students won a total of 31 prizes including six first-place winners, six second-place winners, four third-place winners, and 15 honorable mentions.
Professor Patrick Lin, academic specialist at DLIFLC’s Asian School I, was impressed by the results.
“Considering DLIFLC students participated in just 10 contestant groups, this result is really excellent,” said Lin. “DLI students outperformed their rivals from other universities and colleges again this year, showcasing the high quality of our Chinese program, which we are all proud of. I think there are three factors contributing to our students’ great success in the contest – hard work by our Chinese language faculty, high motivation by our students, and strong support from the school management.”
Sixty-eight Mandarin Chinese language students at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center participated in the 42nd Annual Mandarin Speech contest in San Francisco April 22, with 31 DLI students winning awards. (Photo by Siyi (Lois) Gao, DLIFLC Asian School I)
Dr. Janette Edwards, dean of Asian School I, along with 58 Chinese faculty members, attended the speech contest to support the event held at Lowell High School in San Francisco. Edwards was also one of the award presenters during the award ceremony at the end of the day-long event.
“I am so pleased, but not at all surprised, by the great showing of our students,” said Edwards, who also expressed her congratulations particularly to the organizers, judges and performers, who worked tirelessly to make this event a big success. The Asian School I dancing group and dragon dance team also performed during the event.
DLIFLC provides resident instruction in 17 languages at the Presidio of Monterey, California, with the capacity to instruct another 65 languages in Washington, D.C., graduating more than 220,000 linguists since 1941.
In addition, multiple language training detachments exists at sites in the U.S., Europe, Hawaii and Korea spanning all the U.S. geographic combatant commands in support of the total force.
