Japan Centre Students Sweep ACT Japanese Speech Contest

Students from Mark Gibeau's Surasura Japanese class swept away the competition in the ACT speech contest.

The annual competition was held at the University of Canberra on August 23rd and saw over fifty speeches presented in high school, open beginner, open and background speaker divisions. Bethany Clark, Madeleine Firth and Chris Higgins from the Japan Centre beat out a field of nearly thirty contestants in the open division to take First, Second and Third prizes respectively while Karlis Tebescis took First prize in the background speaker division.

A panel of Japanese language teachers and representatives from the Japan Foundation and the Japanese Embassy rated speakers on the basis of the content of their speeches, presentation and language ability.

As a part of the Japan Foundation’s 39th National Japanese Language Speech Contest the two first place winners will go on to the national competition to be held in Sydney in October. We wish them the best of luck and our congratulations go out to all of the ANU students who participated in the contest.