The New Year is coming. The Chinese New Year Celebration, as one of the traditional activities of XLIS every year, is of great significance to the growth of students. This year, teachers and students from XLIS gathered in the cloud. Through a series of exciting activities, they experienced the profoundness of Chinese, exercised public expression skills, constantly explored self-worth, and pursued self through active thinking and active practice.
“Each beauty has its own beauty” 2022 XLIS 4th Online Speech Contest
The list of winners in the native language group
Eric Zhang
Olivia Yu、Rambo Zuo
Cathy Du、Leighton Allen、Alex Ren
List of winners in the second language group
Tammy Nie
Jinny Ko、Alice Song、Diana Jo
Choi Park、Tommy Lee、Thomas Choi
Eric Zhang from M1A won first place in the native language group. He was a junior reporter for all media in Shaanxi Province. Eric analyzed the cultural integration between teachers and students from various countries and families in our school from a deep perspective. He also praised the Olympic Games, the sportsmanship of friendly competition from all countries. Olivia Yu from M1B shows strong, independent, and confident women through photos of women from different countries, backgrounds, and occupations. She uses delicate and firm language. Rambo Zuo of M3 explains how to get rid of prejudice and understand the philosophies of others.
The performance of the second language group students is also outstanding. Tammy Nie, who won first place, is a student of DP1. From the perspective of Chinese aesthetics, she uses fluent language and thought-provoking viewpoints to discuss that beauty cannot be defined by a single standard. Jinny Ko of M4 presented in plain language that the most beautiful people and the most beautiful things in life deserve to be discovered. Diana Jo from M2 tells people a kind heart is more important than appearance by telling a meaningful little story. Alice Song of M1B brought the audience to the world of gourmet food, showing the food and cultural characteristics of various countries in the world, allowing the audience to “feast their mouths” across the screen.
The speeches of other students also present their characteristics, and they all show their unique and profound understanding of beauty. The students learned from each other through this online competition. They also took advantage of the opportunity of cultural exchange to learn from each other and learn from each other’s strengths. At the same time, the students of our school also fully demonstrated their agile thinking ability, national self-confidence, and excellent literary talent.
The following is the acceptance speech of the winner of the championship
M1 Eric Zhang won the first place in the native language group
I was overjoyed to see the news of winning the prize. Recalling the process of preparing and recording the speech,I remembered that the speech was edited many times. It was difficult to finish my speech within five minutes. I recorded the video again and again, from day to night. After more than a hundred times of videoing, I still not felt very satisfied. Successfully, I was able to finish it at one go. Thinking that so many senior students are involved, I comforted myself that it is good enough to be in the top five. This unexpected result also came from the encouragement given by my teacher. My teacher told me that there is always a return if you pay enough efforts. I want to say: thank you, my teachers.
DP1 Tammy Nie won the first place in the second language group
Hello, everyone! I am Tammy and I am honored to have placed first among the Language B students for this year’s Chinese speech competition. The topic that we were given to elaborate on this time was “beauty”. Although I already had many viewpoints on this topic, for me, it was still a challenge to neatly organize and present them to you all in an orderly fashion. Except for making me think deeper into the topic, this project also taught me to face my problems calmly and solve them. As you all know, the unpredictable spread of COVID across Xi’an made us all quarantined at home. It’s such a pity that I can’t present this speech to you physically in our Blue Dragon Theatre. Changes were made and at the end, every contestant had to deliver their speech video. At first, I was worried if I could meet the standards to do a perfect video, but later I successfully completed my work. At the end, I want to thank all the teachers and judges that supported and encouraged me.
Elin from M2, who won last year’s second language speech contest, turned into a student judge this year and watched the performance of the contestants with other judges and teachers. She said: “It was a pleasure to be a student judge in 2022 4th Chinese New Year Speech Contest. I saw everyone had their own ideas about “our own beauty ” and each of them was great! Pity we are having special time, and we couldn’t host the competition in XLIS Blue Dragon Theater. However, I really appreciated the enthusiasm and passion of contestants. There were participants who were not Chinese native speaker, but their speeches were powerful and I loved their performance. Congratulations to all contestants. Hope our school can educated more talented people!”
Selina Ren, the M4 student who won last year’s native language speech contest, also appreciated this year’s candidates: “I was impressed because both native and non-native speakers perform surprisingly well information they want to convey was not only complete, also empathetic. Their body language make the online competition vitality and eye contact let the audience in front of the screen feel a sense of face-to-face emotional transmission just like offline competition. I believe the Chinese speech is the collision of cultures from different countries not only the individual communication.”
The speech contest ended successfully in the cloud. Mr.Jo, a Korean parent of XLIS who came to Xi’an in 2019, after appreciating the wonderful performance of the children, sent good wishes to XLIS: “I hope the students will work together and embrace all the challenges in life to achieve their dreams. And XLIS will become the world’s first-class school in the future!”
XLIS the First Micro-video Collection Activity
In addition to the speech contest, the secondary Chinese department also organized the first micro video solicitation activity at the advent of the Spring Festival. This activity built a platform for students to fully display their Chinese language and display charm of traditional culture. With active and open minds, students chose different topics according to their own interests and expressed their enthusiasm for learning Chinese and thinking about traditional Chinese culture through various forms such as Vlog recording, street interviews, poetry recitation, experience of traditional crafts and talent shows etc.
In this micro video solicitation activity, students of the Chinese language acquisition class fully displayed their language learning achievements, shared their thoughts and feelings about living in China, explored and compared the differences between Chinese and their own cultures, and deepened their understanding of cultural diversity as well as inclusiveness.
“My Vlog topic is China’s minorities people, because I thought this topic is very interesting. My country only has one ethnic group, so it was a chance for me to learn about the way how many minorities live together in one country.”——M1 Hyoju Lee (Olivia) South Korea
“I played guitar and sang a Chinese song which I like very much -” childhood “. I learned this song a month ago. When I first heard it, I thought the lyrics were very beautiful. I hope we can look back on this time with fond memories.”——M2 Dayeon Kim (Elin) South Korea
“Hello everyone, I’m Santiago, a food blogger. I found that in China, many people eat too much meat every day. Today I’m going to introduce six healthy foods that can replace meat, I hope you like it.”——M2 Santiago Abello Lopez (Santiago) Colombia
“My video discussed the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality. I chose this topic because I have been discriminated against in the past and have personally experienced the impact of gender inequality on me, so I hope everyone can see this issue .I thought it was difficult to make a Chinese video, but the theme was meaningful, so I spent a long time and finally made it, I am very happy. I have been in China for two years and will go back to South Korea soon. Participating this event is a good experience and the best souvenir I gave myself.”——M4 Yujin Lee (Yujin) South Korea
“I made an inspirational video about how to live a good life during the lock down period. I want to share with you how we can overcome our current difficulties with a positive attitude, as we have to stay at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak. While making this video, my own mindset is slowly changing and growing. I hope my video can give you strength and I wish you all a better and more mature version of yourself!”——M4 Yujin Ko (Jinny) South Korea
When I first came to China, I saw that the transportation fee in China is very cheap, so I was interested in transportation. When I was making the video, I learned a lot about the characteristics of Chinese transportation. Chinese buses have plastic chairs, which I think is very interesting. ——M1 Kim Dongha (Brian) South Korea
“I chose the SDG 2: Zero Hunger as my theme, because I think hunger is related to many problems such as the gap between the rich and the poor and the environment. I think this is a Great opportunity to tell people how bad the hunger problem is in the world.”——M4 Min Yoo (Min) South Korea
At the same time, the students of the Chinese language and literature class are also expressing their understanding and inheritance of traditional Chinese culture in their own ways. Some students showed calligraphy, ink painting, reciting ancient poems and playing ancient music. Some students demonstrated traditional Chinese skills such as paper cutting, dough figure making and mahjong. Some students integrate local food culture into powerful rhythm, expressing national pride and confidence in the form of Rap. The styles of the videos are diverse and unique, but all of them show the children’s strong identity and cultural confidence.
This micro-video collection activity is during the online class period. All videos, from topic selection and planning to production and presentation, are independently completed by students. Each video incorporates students’ interest, inspiration, professional skills and enthusiasm for learning. The successful holding of this activity not only provides ample space for students to develop innovative and critical thinking, but also shows our school’s grand vision and mission of taking students as the center and cultivating global citizens.
Organizers
XLIS Secondary Chinese teachers
Eunice Hou
Secondary Chinese Lead Teacher, MYP&DP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher, DP TOK teacher
Emma Yang
Secondary assistant coordinator, MYP&DP Chinese acquisition teacher
Carrie Quan
MYP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher,MYP&DP Chinese acquisition teacher
Matthew Lu
MYP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher, MYP Chinese acquisition teacher
Jasmin Sun
MYP&DP Chinese acquisition teacher
Momo Li
MYP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher, MYP Chinese acquisition teacher
Click here for more details.
Authors:
MYP&DP students
Momo Li (MYP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher, MYP Chinese acquisition teacher)
Jasmin Sun (MYP&DP Chinese acquisition teacher)
Matthew Lu (MYP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher, MYP Chinese acquisition teacher)
Carrie Quan (MYP Chinese Language & Literature Teacher, MYP&DP Chinese acquisition teacher)