After 2 weeks’ intensive preparation, the 2014 Chinese Tongue Twister Competition of Keats School in China was successfully held on April 2nd. Last week, all the students took part in the initial competition. Two students from each class were selected to compete for the final awards. Before the final competition, every student prepared and practiced carefully. One student walked to the school every day and he kept practicing when he was walking. Another student even memorized the tongue twisters in order to achieve fluency. The teachers could tell that the competition must be a wonderful one and it turned out to be true.
Sunny and warm, the weather showed her greatest friendliness to the competition. On April 2nd, the students and the teachers walked to the garden in Kunming Museum, which is only 10 minutes’ walk from the school. The beautiful garden with green court and trees was the place where we held the final competition and let the students enjoy the amazing nature in a busy and international city. The students sat around and the competition officially started with Joy’s welcome speech.
The final competition was divided into 3 rounds. During the 1st round, each contestant was asked to read one Chinese tongue twister that he/she was most ready for. After they perfectly completed the first round, their fluency and pronunciation amazed all the people present because they spoke Chinese almost like Chinese native speakers. During the 2nd round, contestants needed to draw lots to read another Chinese tongue twister. Some students got one they were very confident about while some got very hard ones. However, the students who got the hard Chinese tongue twister persisted in completing the match and won enormous admiration. The most breath-taking part of the competition is the 3rd round. All the contestants were required to read a Chinese tongue twister that they had never learned or practiced before. And this tongue twister was also extremely hard for Chinese people: 化肥会挥发，黑化肥发灰，灰化肥发黑，黑化肥发灰会挥发；灰化肥挥发会发黑，黑化肥挥发发灰会花飞；灰化肥挥发发黑会飞花. We first invited the Chinese teachers to read this tongue twister and then each contestant read it out loud. They all successfully read it. The teachers and bystanders couldn’t believe that foreigners can complete such hard tongue twister so fluently.
After the three rounds finished, the teachers started to calculate the score for each contestant. At the same time, the host invited all the students and teachers to try some English tongue twisters. This was an interesting part of the competition as they all did not prepare and they couldn’t help making mistakes, which intrigued laughs all the way to the award ceremony.
The most exciting part was the award ceremony. Our vice-president Joy Huang announced that 高岩松（Peter）won the first place, 曾莉娅（Leanna） and Francisca won the second prize, 俄美恩（Meghann）, 资成 （Ruben）and 恬蕊（Terrilyn） won the third place, and Hassan, 瑞秋（Rachel）, Jonah and 小欧 won the Excellence Awards. They happily received their prizes and certificates, and were congratulated by other students.
The success of the Tongue Twister Competition showed that Keats students can harvest happiness while they learn Chinese in China. Studying Mandarin Chinese can be lots of fun and making friends with other students could make their stay in China more enjoyable and interesting.
