Wisconsin Association of Chinese Language Teachers

President Yongyan Liu Milwaukee yongyan.liu85@gmail.com Secretary Yuzhou Wu Middleton Cross Plains Area School District ywu@mcpasd.k12.wi.us Treasurer Remya Sarma-Traynor UW-Stevens Point rsarmtr@uwsp.edu

022 Chinese Speech Contest Report2

thOn April 23, 2022, the 19 annual Wisconsin Chinese language speech contest was successfully conducted through Zoom. This was the third online speech contest since 2020.

Encouraged by a larger number of virtual participants last year, the WACLT board decided to extend the online format for one more year. This year’s contest welcomed 90 Chinese language learners ranging from pre-K to over 60 years old. Many family members, teachers, and friends of the participants showed up on Zoom to support the event.

The opening ceremony of the event was a series of pre-recorded students’ performances by Wisconsin Chinese students and teachers. The showcase included a Chinese traditional instrument Guzheng performance, group Taiji forms, group singing of a Chinese song written by students themselves, and traditional Chinese dress dance, etc.

The contestants were grouped based on their age and language profic iency level. Each group selected gold, silver, and bronze medal winners. The speech rubric includes four aspects: content, fluency, pronunciation, and stage performance. The judges and observers were highly impressed with contestants’ performances. The final awards and certificates were delivered to the contestants’ teachers a week later.

The WACLT board would like to thank all the participants (students and teachers) in the 19th annual Chinese speech contest. We especially appreciate the support and encouragement from the Language Resource Center at UW-Milwaukee, and the online newspaper Milwaukee Chinese Time. They both provided sponsorship to this year’s speech contest. Check out the article in the Milwaukee Chinese Time by scanning the QR code below. We look forward to the in-person contest next year. WACLT Monthly Sharing Event Highlights – February 2022

The WACLT board continued the monthly sharing event for fellow Wisconsin Chinese teachers. The TCI guru Haiyun Lu shared her new book series, Not Easy To Be a Child. She demonstrated in great detail the planning, teaching materials, class activities, and assessments of one of the series. The participating teachers raised many questions and were encouraged by Lu laoshi’s new guided series.

Yuzhou Wu