The awards ceremony for the 7th annual Gold Apple Cup Non-Chinese Students Writing Competition was held last Wednesday at the International Meeting Center of Shanghai Gold Apple Bilingual School. Over 200 students and teachers from 14 international schools in Pudong New Area attended the ceremony, according to Shanghai Gold Apple Bilingual School, co-organizer of the competition. Classical Chinese-style performances were given by foreign students from five participant schools.

"I've been in China for 13 years, but still find the polyphonic Chinese characters difficult to distinguish," Huang Xiani, a 12th grade Korean student at Gold Apple Bilingual School, told the Global Times. "That confuses me a lot."

In her article for the competition, Huang, who won third prize in the high school students' category, shared her experiences of polyphonic characters learning. "My classmates all laughed when I read 'One child said' in an ancient Chinese article, because the ancient Chinese character for 'said' is '曰' (pronouncing 'yue'), which is almost the same as '日'(the Sun, pronouncing 'ri'). And while the character '藏' is pronounced 'cang' with the meaning of hiding something, it's pronounced 'zang' in expressions referring to Tibet. I was very confused about all these differences," Huang wrote.

Elena Leow-Alegre, a Spanish-Malaysian 11-year-old from Dulwich College Shanghai, won third prize in the primary students' category. Having studied Chinese for six years, the most difficult part of Chinese for Leow-Alegre is the tones. "Many Chinese characters use the same pinyin, so it's really difficult to know which one is which and which one has which tone."

The student shared with the Global Times her special methods for learning Chinese. "Revising, studying and try to learn in a fun way, like playing games. If a character sounds or looks like something, then just remember it as that thing."

Leow-Alegre said she took part in the competition because she wanted to challenge herself, seeing what she could do in her limited hours. As she wrote in her article, "Sometimes my mom asked me to translate for her when we would go shopping and dining. This makes me really proud. Chinese will also be the secret language between me and my younger sister!"

Golden apples

According to Wu Hui, a Putonghua proficiency examiner from the Language Commission in Pudong New Area who participated in grading the competition articles, for each of the three competing groups (primary school, junior high and senior high), there were different grading standards based on students' learning years.

"Those who learned Chinese for less than two years would be graded under a lower standard in terms of fluency than those with more than five years. But the most important thing was what they tried to convey. We valued the ones who shared their personal stories and conveyed their true understandings of life," Wu said. "We have two-year learners winning first prize."

Regarding non-Chinese speaking children's performance in this competition, Wu said she was glad to see more foreign students willing to participate this year than when the competition was first organized in 2010, along with richer stories and more wonderful stage performances at award ceremonies.

For Yu Weiren, director of the TCSOL Education Committee of Pudong Education Association, such writing competitions provide platforms for TCSOL (Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages) teachers from different schools to communicate with and learn from each other. It is also an opportunity for teachers to judge if their efforts and teaching methods are bearing fruit.

"Foreign students need to master necessary skills in order to live and study in China," Yu added. "By learning Chinese and using the language correctly, they will find it easier to integrate into our culture."

The article is written by Gu Qianwen



 

 

 

 

Awards ceremony for the 7th annual Gold Apple Cup Non-Chinese Students Writing Competition was held in Shanghai, where local and international students gave performances. Photos: Courtesy of TCSOL Education Committee of Pudong Education Association