On July 16, the 14^thJapanese Speech Contest Finals was held at the Hitotsubashi Hall in Tokyo, Japan. 16 top players who won the special prize in 8 preliminaries across China attended the finals, which were divided into two parts, the prepared speech and the instant question answering. Gong Weiyan, a junior majoring in Japanese won the third prize(JFE special award) and the Special Prize(the most impressive contestant) with a total score ranked the 4^th. This is the first time for a Xidian student to enter the finals of this competition and to achieve such an outstanding result. As an honorable moment for both Gong and XDU, it demonstrates not only the excellent professionalism and good spirit of Japanese majors, but also the quality education of the Japanese major.

JFE Special Award

This competition is the highest-level Japanese speech contest in China with college students as its participants. Since 2006, it has been successfully held for 14 times by China Education Association for International Exchange, Nihon Keizai Shimbun(Japan Economic News Agency) and the Association of Chinese Professors in Japan. This contest has been held each year since 2006. Throughout China, 8 preliminary contest regions are set, where two Special Prize winners are selected from each region to enter the grand final in Tokyo. The contest aims to interest Chinese college students in learning Japanese to a high standard and in doing so, to promote mutual understanding and people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan. The year 2019 was designated by the Chinese and Japanese governments as the “China-Japan Youth Exchange Promotion Year”. This competition was also included in the series of activities in “China-Japan Youth Exchange Promotion Year”.

A Group Photo of Gong Weiyan and Two Chinese Judges, Professor Xiugang (the Left One) and Professor Zhou Yifu(the Right One)

From May to June this year, the preliminaries of the Japanese Speech Contest was held in eight regions in China, with a record high number of over 18,000 students from 263 universities entering. Under the guidance of Professor Lu Lei and foreign teacher Kato Yasuyuki, Gong Weiyan won the special prize in the Preliminaries (Northwest Region) and got a place in the finals in Tokyo. In the finals, the judges from both China and Japan graded contestants’ performance in four aspects: content, delivery, pronunciation and grammar. Then, 1 first prize, 2 second prizes, and 3 third prizes (special prize) were selected. Zhou He from Shandong Agricultural University, Zeng Sule from Chengdu Institute Sichuan International Studies University, and Meng Yifan from Jilin University were awarded the first and second prizes respectively.