Two students in the Chinese program, Andrew Allard (安竹) and Heidi Schwenk (杨冰玉), gave excellent performances in the Jiangsu Cup Chinese Speech Contest held on Sunday, November 4, 2018. Andrew Allard won a gold award and Heidi Schwenk won a bronze award!
Sixteen finalists from universities in the greater Washington area, such as Georgetown University, American University, University of Virginia, George Mason University, University of Maryland, competed through several rounds of competition, including a prepared speech, Q&A on Jiangsu Province & Chinese, and an improvised speech on a randomly selected topic on Nov.4. The awards include a trip to the Jiangsu Province of China in summer 2019 and scholarship opportunities to study in China as well. This is the 8th year of this speech contest.
As a gold award winner, Andrew Allard encouraged Chinese language learners to participate in the Chinese language speech contest. “I am very proud to have been a participant in the 2018 Jiangsu Cup. It was a great honor to represent our university's Chinese program, and I would strongly recommend participation in next year's competition to any interested GW Chinese students. Thank you to the Chinese department faculty for all the support over the years! 加油！” Both Andrew Allard and Heidi Schwenk major in Chinese Language and Literature. They are currently taking CHIN 3109 “Introduction to Classical Chinese”, CHIN 3123 “Introduction to Chinese Linguistics I” and CHIN 4107 “Readings in Modern Chinese I” classes in the GW Chinese program.
Our heartfelt congratulations go to our two winners who brought honor to GW as well as to themselves, but also to our devoted Chinese language faculty.