1) MLL Book Prize in Japanese
The prize is awarded to a student who has shown overall excellence in Japanese studies. This student is often an East Asian Studies major. This year’s award goes to Soyoung Kim.
Soyoung Kim was born and raised in South Korea. She started learning Japanese in high school, and continued her study at William & Mary by taking four years of language classes. Since she loves to watch Japanese movies and listen to J-pop, she really enjoyed studying the language. In her senior year, she also took a Japanese-English translation class with Professor Knighton. Although she had been learning Japanese and watching Japanese movies, it was her first time doing translation. She learned how to be a creative translator in the class even though neither Japanese nor English was her mother tongue. Soyoung majored in International Relations and is very interested in the Asia-Pacific region After graduation, she is going back to South Korea to look for work enhancing relations among the Asia-Pacific countries. She expects her experience at the College and her Japanese skills to be very helpful in achieving her future goals. The Japanese section wishes Soyoung luck as she moves forward and congratulates her on this well-deserved award.
2) Kinyo Prize for Excellence in Japanese
This prize was established through the generous support of Mr. Kazuo Nakamura of Kinyo Virginia, Inc. This prize is given annually to recognize the hard work and achievements of the top students at each level of our Japanese program. Each student receives a $100 award.
First Year Japanese: Kyung Rae Kim
Second Year Japanese: Hanzhang Zhao
Third Year Japanese: Andrew Runge
Fourth Year Japanese: Soyoung Kim
Award Winner Bios
Kyung Rae Kim has done an excellent job in all aspects of the class throughout the year. He always pays close attention to the details and easily adapts to new situations in a non-native language. He is very goal-oriented and always seek to achieve results at a higher level.
Hanzhang Zhao’s Japanese proficiency has improved significantly this year so that she is able to talk with the instructor in a natural context. In addition, she always did a superb job on the oral presentations and other speaking activities, and they were well-received by her classmates.
“As a graduating senior, I have really enjoyed studying Arabic during my time here at the college. As difficult as it was, the support of my professors and the camaraderie with my classmates made studying Arabic a little easier, and definitely more fun. It was also really cool to see how much I learned; four years ago I was illiterate and completely confused by Arabic, but now I and many of my classmates can have intelligent discussions about complex political discussions without lapsing into English. One of the best parts of learning Arabic was studying abroad in Jordan, where I used Arabic regularly in daily life. My host mother even told everyone that I spoke Arabic, which made me really happy.”
Congratulations to Lirsen Myrtaj
who won an Honorable Mention at
the Fourteenth Annual ACTR NATIONAL Post-Secondary Russian Essay Contest. This year they had 946 contestants from 47 universities.
