Two students from CityU's Division of Language Studies have won championship and third runner-up prizes at the 27th Hong Kong Japanese Language Speech Contest on 6 July. 

Chau Yee-pan and Chung Wai-sze won first and third runners-up awards respectively in the contest. Participants presented a five-minute speech on the thirtieth anniversary of the Sino-Japanese normalization of relations followed by a question-and-answer section.

"I feel very grateful for my lecturers, in particular, Dr Rita Takahashi, for their support and guidance. They have helped a lot on improving my pronunciation and presentation skills," said Chau Yee Pan.

There were 19 contestants from various tertiary institutions and Japanese language schools showing off their talents at the contest this year. Competition was keen because of the high standard of Japanese language proficiency shared by participants. CityU's Japanese language students have taken home many prizes in the past year, including championships in the 2001 Hong Kong Japanese Language Speech Contest and at the recent 2002 Macau Japanese Language Speech Contest.