MKA Upper School students shine at the 12th Chinese Bridge Speech Contest for U.S. High School Students!

MKA Upper School students shine at the 12th Chinese Bridge Speech Contest for U.S. High School Students!

For the sixth time, MKA students were not only invited to participate in the final round of the Chinese Bridge Speech Contest for U.S. High School Students, but also earned awards at the competition. In previous years, MKA students and alumni Sam Cleverly, Payson Ruhl, Isaiah Kramer, Jayson Thompson, Julia Thompson and Sophia Ward have attended the competition, won the prizes and been recognized for their superior achievement in the language. This year, congratulations goes to MKA eleventh-grader junior, Lailanni Lucien, who participated in the contest held on April 22 at the University of Massachusetts Boston and earned the second-place awards for her accomplishment performances in the face of stiff competition.

Lailanni only started began her Chinese learning the language last this past September in Chinese 1 class. This time she did her an outstanding job of preparing her performance during these past four months leading up to the event. Upper School Chinese teacher Dr. River He notes: "Lailanni is very talented in language learning as a student who have is currently enrolled in two three foreign language classes in our department. The speech contest provides me and Ms. Yingqian Xiao with a welcome opportunity to encourage our level 1 and 2 students to practice their Chinese in order to become more proficient in both language and culture." and this successful case gave me and Ms. Yingqian Xiao valuable experiences to teach and encourage our level 1 & 2 students to practice their fluency for specific topics."