Good news! On November 1, W&M students won first place in the 2015 Jiangsu Cup Chinese Speech Contest at the George Washington University. Three students of Chinese language, Colleen Mulrooney, Caroline Lebegue and Alexandra Bate, entered the final round of the contest. In the end, Colleen won a Gold Award, one of the two grand prizes; Caroline received a Silver Award alongside five other finalists; and Alexandra was one of the recipients of the Bronze Award. The Gold Award winner receives a full scholarship to pursue a Master’s Degree in Nanjing University. All other award winners receive a full scholarship to study Chinese at Nanjing University for a semester.
The 2015 Jiangsu Cup Speech Contest is open to undergraduate and graduate students studying upper-intermediate and advanced levels of Chinese in colleges and universities in the greater Washington Metropolitan area. This speech contest has expanded since 2011. This year, the contest extended invitations to twelve universities in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and sixteen finalists from nine universities entered the final round of the competition. It is the first time that W&M was invited to nominate contestants. Five Chinese-language students were nominated to compete in the preliminary round, and three of them were selected to enter the final round. Each finalist delivered a three-minute prepared speech, answered two questions about China’s Jiangsu Province, and gave a four-minute improvised speech for which they only had five minutes to prepare.
The three W&M finalists delivered excellent speeches on stage and impressed the judges and the audience. The Gold Award winner Colleen Mulrooney, a freshman who came to the College two months ago, is currently studying upper-intermediate Chinese; the Silver Award recipient Caroline Lebegue is a sophomore taking advanced speaking Chinese; and sophomore Alexandra Bate, the Bronze Award winner, is also studying upper-intermediate Chinese.
