Pitt Announces Winners of Annual High School Japanese Speech Contest

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh’s Asian Studies Center, in collaboration with Pitt’s Japanese Speaking Society and the Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania, has selected the winners of the annual High School Japanese Speech Contest, held March 2 in the University’s William Pitt Union. Eighty students from eight area high schools participated. 

Students competed on four different levels, including a poster session for first-year students of Japanese and three levels for the speech contest, corresponding to the number of years of language study. Winners are as follows:

Yinping Hu, Allderdice High School, won first place in the advanced/advanced plus level, under the instruction of Isabel Espino de Valdivia;

Benjamin Laun, a private student, won first place in the intermediate level, under the instruction of Junko Kapples of Upper St. Clair High School;

Hoan Bao Ngo, Norwin High School, won first place at the beginner level, under the instruction of Hiroko Maekawa; and

Amy Adelman, Allegheny-Clarion Valley High School, won first place in the poster contest, under the instruction of Dixie Lipinchan.

First place winners received trophies for their respective schools.

Special guests were Masakazu Kigure, Consul for the Consulate General of Japan, and Jennifer Creamer, associate director of Pitt’s University Center for International Studies. Judges included faculty members from Pitt’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. 

In addition to Pitt’s Office of the Provost and the Japan Iron and Steel Federation and Mitsubishi endowments, sponsors include Westinghouse, Sumitomo Corporation of America, Elliott Group, Wheeling-Nisshin, Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, the Consulate-General of Japan in New York, the Japan Foundation in Los Angeles, and Temple University Japan Campus. 

The Asian Studies Center is part of the University Center for International Studies.

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