St Paul’s Catholic College, Manly has once again been victorious in the prestigious Tokimeki Cup Speaking Competition. Year 10 Japanese students had been practicing tirelessly towards the end of Term 2 for this annual Speaking Competition that takes place against other local Peninsula schools including Mackellar Girls, Balgowlah Boys and Stella Maris.
The St Paul’s team made up of Cooper Snel, Euan Donald, Ivica Covic, Ty Zochling and Zac Camphuis perfected their pronunciation, intonation and fluency of reading a Japanese short story in weekly recess training sessions.
At the competition each student was required to read their story in its original form of right to left, vertically and in the Japanese scripts of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, all in front of crowd of about 60 people. Our team impressed the judges with their excellent self-introductions, presentation skills and overall fluency of the story.
With team members, parents and St Paul’s Japanese teacher, Amanda Kibby, nervously awaiting the results all were overjoyed to hear Ty Zochling had taken out first place of the competition achieving ‘pera pera’ status (fluent) on his 16th birthday – a tremendous achievement.