Olivia Edmundson has been studying the Chinese language for four years, a skill she intends to use to prepare for college.
And when she orders Chinese food.
She was one of the 220 middle and high school students from 20 schools across Florida who demonstrated their abilities to read, write and speak Mandarin Chinese at the fifth annual Florida Statewide Chinese Competition on Friday and Saturday.
The competition, hosted by Oak Hall School, almost doubled in attendance from last year, according to Ginger Lin, the competition organizer and Chinese teacher at Oak Hall School.
“It’s one of the most important languages in the world,” Lin said.
Lin said that although it is called a competition, the event is “almost like a test you would take in school.”
Rather than competing face-to-face, students completed evaluations based on their skill levels.
The most basic portion of the writing test was multiple choice, but advanced students had to translate entire paragraphs and write a short essay in Chinese, Lin said.
For the speaking portion of the competition, students selected and prepared four to five topics the week before the competition and gave a speech to evaluators.
Advance-level students were also required to hold a conversation entirely in Chinese with their evaluators.
Lin said for the reading portion of the test, students read passages in Chinese and answered five multiple-choice questions on each story.
Edmundson, a high school sophomore in Lin’s class at Oak Hall School, said this was her fourth year competing in the event. She said she had been studying one to two hours every day to prepare.
“It was hard to come up with sentences off the top of my head,” she said, referring to the writing portion of the evaluation. “It was really challenging, but I think I did well.”
