Mandarin or Putonghua is the world’s most spoken language, having over 1 billion speakers across the globe. Jinan University nurtures huge number of Overseas students while adding a beautiful feather to their career, by the experience of learning Chinese language. To make this learning enthusiastic and encouraging,a Chinese speech competition was held on 18thof April, 2019 by the International School of Jinan University. The competition was held at Jinan University’s Main Campus, 2ndSocial Sciences Building, room 316.

17 students all together participated in the event. 10 students were from the beginner’s group and 7 students were from the intermediate group. The competition was judged by 4 teachers, Mr Xu Fuping, Ms Wang Shuhui , Ms Ren Ge and Ms Xie Fei. The event was also attended by the Secretary of International School Student Affairs Office Ms. Yu Jiajia. The topic for the intermediate group was 十年后的我 and the topic for the beginner’s group was 我的留学生活.The participants were judged on the basis of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and content.Personalimage and speech skills were also included in the scoring criteria for this competition and the script couldn’t have been scripted.

The participants had put in great effort by using all the grammatical and pronunciation skills to prepare the speech. The speeches were scrutinised well by the Chinese teachers before they were versed. However, mastering tones in Oral Chinese is one of the greatest challenges experienced by the foreigners. Overcoming this obstacle to a great extent many students were quite fluent in their speech, which probably mesmerised the teachers. The competition began with the intermediate group, they shared what they expect to be in the next ten years. The fluency, grammar, use of unique vocabulary by certain participants, as foreigners, had spellbound the audience. Mr Xu Fuping encouraged all the participants by the feelings shared by him. He also praised each participant with their special quality while speaking Chinese.

After the admirable performance of the intermediate group, the beginners group began their performances. They shared about their beautiful and adventurous experience as an Overseas Student in China so far. They shared how finely and quickly they adapted to a variant culture and lifestyle of China. As beginners in learning Chinese some of them sounded quite fluent with most of the words and their tones. Some of them even tend to use vocabulary and grammar which probably they didn’t learn so far.

Then it was the time of the most awaited moment, the results of the competition!

Such enthusiasm and courage were highly appreciated by all the Chinese teachers attending the event. The teachers who taught those students felt quite proud seeing all those bright faces on the stage using the skills gifted to those students by them. Such events in future can definitely boost the morale of many students in the University in learning Chinese.

writer | Faye Tauseef Jawed

photos | Leva Jenny

editor | yuchen liang