Seven 91亚色 students competed at the 30th Annual Ontario Japanese Speech contest held at the University of Toronto in March and every one of them brought home a prize.
Thirty-four contestants from institutions across Ontario, including the University of Western Ontario, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo and McMaster University attended the competition. 91亚色 students, who are currently enrolled in JP1000(Elementary Modern Standard Japanese), JP 2000 (Intermediate Modern Standard Japanese) and JP3000 (Advanced Modern Standard Japanese) competed in three categories 鈥 three students in the beginners' category, three in intermediate, and one in the open category.
Out of the 12 contestants who competed in the intermediate category, Boram Shin (right), a fourth-year student in the International BBA program at the Schulich School of Business, shared her personal story as a student, 鈥淔 in the Transcript, but A+ life Experience鈥, and won second place.
In the beginner鈥檚 category, 13 participants competed. Third place went to Michael Flint (left), a fourth-year cultural studies student in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), who enthusiastically delivered the speech, 鈥淲elcome to Toronto, Visitors!鈥, based on his work experience as a multilingual tour guide.
Nelson Ouyang, a fourth-year information technology student in the LA&PS, won 
fourth place for passionately talking about his love for a new style of Japanese music in his speech, 鈥淒oojin Music has its Charms鈥.
Ekaterina Zubkova (right), an International Studies student at Glendon, charmed the audience with her creative and futuristic speech, 鈥淩obots are Human's Best Friend鈥, to receive fifth place.
Intermediate category鈥檚 Aarathi Shatagopam, a business and economics student at Glendon, was awarded with Special Effort Prize for her speech, 鈥淢y Ideal House鈥. Two special prizes 
went to intermediate category鈥檚 Joo Youn Lee, an economics student in LA&PS, and open category鈥檚 Mikwi Cho, a biology student in the Faculty of Science & Engineering, for their speeches 鈥淧lastic Surgery in Korea鈥 and 鈥淟iving with Harmless Cancer鈥.
Left: Nelson Ouyang
(OJSC) celebrated its 30th competition this year. The organizing committee, which consist of volunteer members from different institutions acknowledged the works by three professors who made significant contributions to the development of the speech contest. 91亚色鈥檚 Professor Norio Ota was one of them.
Right: Chair of the organizing committee Professor Kumiko Inutsuka of 91亚色 (front row centre) with the 2012 prize winners, including the seven from 91亚色
Left: Norio Ota
Ota聽has served as a committee member for 17 years and took the initiative to create a web page for OJSC in 1999, and has been hosting the site ever since. The committee members extended their warm appreciation presenting a bouquet of flowers.
Currently, over 300 students study in the .
Submitted to YFile by Kiyoko Toratani, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics in LA&PS