Are they really beginners? Award-winning speeches by NSW students

The 48th Japanese Language Speech Contest-NSW State Contest took place at the University of Sydney on the 16th of September. To encourage beginner-level students, NSW started its unique Wakaba (young leaves) division. Here are this years five award winning speeches in the Wakaba division.

NSW Contest logo Source: Iris Somera / NSW Japanese Speech Contest Steering Committee

The Wakaba division has only been introduced in NSW and there were 52 entries for the division this year. It was a big increase from 38 last year.

Each speech is 1-1.5 minutes long and participants choose a theme from two options, A letter from myself in 2027 or The most important person/thing in my life.

This year, the Special Award went to Emma Ng. Megan Lam, Millie Zhou, Sonia (Yuqing) Kang, and Shunyao (Yoki) Zhou won the Award of Excellence.