Kaitlyn Kerzisnik, Kyle Wright and Kimberly Welenc

Three students from The University of Findlay were selected as finalists for the Japan-American Society of Central Ohio’s (JASCO) Japanese Language Speech Contest at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. They competed against seven other finalists from universities in Ohio on Saturday, March 6.            

To enter the 2010 Japanese Language Speech Contest, each student was required to write an original three-minute speech in Japanese, practice it and record it on tape. A manuscript written in Japanese also was required with each submission.  Only high school and college students studying Japanese, who have not lived in Japan for more than six months and do not come from homes where Japanese is spoken, were eligible for the competition. University and high school finalists competed separately.

According to Hiroaki Kawamura, Ph.D., chair of the department of language and culture and associate professor of Japanese, all students of the Japanese program who have studied Japanese for more than one year are strongly encouraged to participate in the speech contest because the process is more important than the result. The experience of writing the speech in Japanese and practicing reading it out loud is beneficial in the learning process. U

F students have been represented in the final competition in each of the last five years.

During the March 6 competition, finalists were required to deliver their memorized speeches in Japanese on a stage in front of an audience. That was followed by a non-rehearsed question-and-answer session with the judges.

Sophomore Japanese major Kimberly Welenc earned second place; senior pre-medicine major Kyle Wright and graduate student Kaitlyn Kerzisnik, who is studying Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, also competed as finalists.

“I was also a finalist in the competition last year,” said Welenc. “Going through that valuable learning process and gaining experience – rather than focusing on the result of the contest – was a helpful lesson I took away from the competition last year. … Studying Japanese has been, without a doubt, one of the most thrilling, rewarding and challenging experiences of my life.”